Computing first‐arrival seismic traveltimes on unstructured 3‐D tetrahedral grids using the Fast Marching Method

SUMMARY The Fast Marching Method is an efficient numerical algorithm for propagating interfaces such as first‐arrival seismic wave fronts travelling through a velocity distribution. Fast Marching solutions have been developed for use on rectilinear grids in 2‐D and 3‐D. We are interested in unstruct...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical journal international 2011-02, Vol.184 (2), p.885-896
Main Authors: Lelièvre, Peter G., Farquharson, Colin G., Hurich, Charles A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computation
Computational seismology
Geophysics
Numerical solutions
Seismic engineering
Seismic phenomena
Wave propagation
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:SUMMARY The Fast Marching Method is an efficient numerical algorithm for propagating interfaces such as first‐arrival seismic wave fronts travelling through a velocity distribution. Fast Marching solutions have been developed for use on rectilinear grids in 2‐D and 3‐D. We are interested in unstructured grids as they provide some computational advantages when dealing with complicated shapes that are difficult to represent with rectilinear grids. Fast Marching solutions have also been developed for unstructured 2‐D triangular grids but this has yet to be extended to unstructured 3‐D tetrahedral grids. In this paper, we extend the Fast Marching Method to unstructured 3‐D tetrahedral grids using a derivation that follows the 2‐D case. The resulting equations are discussed in intuitive terms and an error analysis is performed. Our method is applied to a simple synthetic example and to a more complicated model based on the Voisey's Bay massive sulphide deposit in Labrador, Canada.
ISSN:0956-540X
1365-246X
DOI:10.1111/j.1365-246X.2010.04880.x