Direct Simulation of Seismic Wave Propagation

Full wave form modeling techniques in 3D complex heterogeneous elastic media axe computationally expensive, even on today’s largest supercomputers. In contrast asymptotic techniques only compute a small subset of the wave field, but can be very fast. Using asymptotic methods in combination with full wave form techniques can speed up the overall computation. I use a particular asymptotic method to compute dynamically the progressingly active computational domain for a parallel full wave form finite difference technique. This leads to an overall decreased computational runtime. This computational technique is applied to simulation in a industrially oriented oil/gas bearing subsruface model as well as to simulation of earthquake related scientific scenarios.