An optimized three-dimensional time-space domain staggered-grid finite-difference method

Abstract

Numerical simulation of three-dimensional (3D) seismic wavefields forms the basis of the research on the migration methods of 3D seismic data based on wave equations. Because the simulation precision of wavefield extrapolation determines the imaging accuracy to a certain extent, it is very important to study how to enhance the forward modeling precision of 3D seismic wavefields. Thus, we build on an optimized 3D staggered-grid finite-difference (SFD) method with high simulation precision based on two-dimensional (2D) seismic modeling. Since it generates the corresponding difference coefficients by utilizing the least square (LS) method to minimize the objective function constructed by the time-space domain dispersion relation of the 3D acoustic wave equation, our optimized time-space domain LS-based 3D SFD method can effectively enhance the modeling precision of the 3D seismic wavefields in theory compared with the 3D SFD methods based on the Taylor-series expansion (TE), especially for the large wavenumber range. Examining the numerical dispersion, algorithm stability and computational cost, we compare our optimized time-space domain LS-based 3D SFD method with three conventional TE-based and LS-based 3D SFD methods to illustrate and demonstrate its effectiveness and feasibility. The numerical examples from different 3D models suggest that our optimized time-space domain LS-based 3D SFD method can generate less numerical dispersion and higher simulation accuracy for 3D seismic wavefields than three other conventional 3D SFD methods, but its stability condition is stricter and its computational cost is slightly higher.