Nearly perfectly matched layer absorber for viscoelastic wave equations

Abstract

We have applied the nearly perfectly matched layer (N-PML) absorber to the viscoelastic wave equation based on the Kelvin-Voigt and Zener constitutive equations. In the first case, the stress-strain relation has the advantage of not requiring additional physical field (memory) variables, whereas the Zener model is more adapted to describe the behavior of rocks subject to wave propagation in the whole frequency range. In both cases, eight N-PML artificial memory variables are required in the absorbing strips. The modeling simulates 2D waves by using two different approaches to compute the spatial derivatives, generating different artifacts from the boundaries, namely, 16th-order finite differences, where reflections from the boundaries are expected, and the staggered Fourier pseudospectral method, where wraparound occurs. The time stepping in both cases is a staggered second-order finite-difference scheme. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the N-PML has a similar performance as in the lossless case. Comparisons with other approaches (S-PML and C-PML) are carried out for several models, which indicate the advantages and drawbacks of the N-PML absorber in the anelastic case.