Efficient simulation of marine controlled source electromagnetic responses for axisymmetric scatter by using numerical mode matching approach

Abstract

Horizontal disk, sphere, and spherical crown are a very important type of scatter in geophysics research. In the marine environment, a disk-like scatter can be used to describe several resistive targets, e.g., basaltic sills and stratigraphic hydrocarbon reservoirs while spherical crown can be used to approximately depict the topography of interface for basement rock. This type of scatter has characteristics of axisymmetrical distribution of the conductivity. If some approaches can be established to efficiently simulate the marine controlled source electromagnetic (MCSEM) response to this scatter, it will be meaningful to investigate the nature of MCSEM responses in complex formation and to build appropriate method of processing and explaining MCSEM data. In this paper, the resistive scatters are approximated by one or several horizontal concentric disks with different radii and thickness values, based on the axially symmetrical spatial distribution of conductivity. Then, a combination of these concentric disks with air, sea water and surrounding beds will construct a horizontally stratified inhomogeneous formation with common axis-center, whose spatial distribution of conductivity is layered in the vertical direction and axisymmetric in the horizontal direction. Based on the approximations mentioned above, the computation of MCSEM response excited by horizontal electrical dipole (HED) located at the z-axis is entirely transformed into two axially symmetrical problems for the Fourier harmonic components of the electromagnetic (EM) fields. The differential operators about the horizontal magnetic components and transformation of horizontal electrical components and other EM components from horizontal magnetic components are derived. Then, the numerical mode matching approach is extended to the simulation of the EM field and three-dimensional (3D) MCSEM responses excited by the HED in the formation. The procedure for solving the EM field is presented. The semi-analytic solution of EM field in the whole space is obtained to efficiently and numerically model MCSEM response in the complex formation. Finally, the efficiency and accuracy of the present method are demonstrated numerically. The characteristics of 3D MCSEM responses in three different cases are further investigated.