Approximate Solutions to the Boundary–Volume Integral Equation for Wave Propagation in Piecewise Heterogeneous Media

Abstract

Piecewise heterogeneous media that the earth presents are composed of large-scale boundary structures and small-scale volume heterogeneities. Wave propagation in such piecewise heterogeneous media can be accurately superposed through the generalized Lippmann–Schwinger integral equation (GLSIE). Two different Born series modeling schemes are formulated for the boundary–volume integral equation with 2-D antiplane motion (SH waves). Both schemes decompose the resulting boundary–volume integral equation matrix into two parts: the self-interaction operator handled with a fully implicit manner, and the extrapolation operator approximated by a Born series. The first scheme associates the self-interaction operator with each boundary itself and the volume itself, and interprets the extrapolation operator as the cross-interaction between each boundary and other boundaries/volume scatterers in a subregion. The second scheme relates the self-interaction operator to each boundary itself and its cross-interaction with the volume scatterers on both sides, and expresses the extrapolation operator as both the direct and indirect (through the volume scatterers) cross-interactions between different boundaries in a subregion. By eliminating the displacement field from the volume scatterers, the second scheme reduces the dimension of the resulting boundary-volume integral equation matrix, leading to a faster convergence than the first scheme. Both the numerical schemes are validated by dimensionless frequency responses to a heterogeneous alluvial valley with the velocity perturbed randomly in the range of ca 5–20 %. The schemes are applied to wave propagation simulation in a heterogeneous multilayered model by calculating synthetic seismograms. Numerical experiments, compared with the full-waveform numerical solution, indicate that the Born series modeling schemes significantly improve computational efficiency, especially for high frequencies.