3D finite‐element simulation of electromagnetic data for inductive and galvanic components

Abstract

A finite‐element method is presented for modelling geophysical electromagnetic (EM) data. The electric field is decomposed into terms involving vector and scalar potentials. Edge element and nodal basis functions are used to approximate the vector and scalar potentials respectively. The solution is implemented on both rectilinear grids and tetrahedral grids. The particular desire is to investigate the relative importance of the vector and scalar potential terms, and hence the inductive and galvanic parts of the EM response.