Scattering of waves in elastic media containing passive and active cracks

Abstract

SUMMARY Scattering of wavefields in a 3-D medium that includes passive and/or active structures, is numerically solved by using the boundary integral equation method (BIEM). The passive structures are velocity anomalies that generate scattered waves upon incidence, and the active structures contain endogenous fracture sources, which are dynamically triggered by the dynamic load due to the incident waves. Simple models are adopted to represent these structures: passive cracks act as scatterers and active cracks as fracture sources. We form cracks using circular boundaries, which consist of many boundary elements. Scattering of elastic waves by the boundaries of passive cracks is treated as an exterior problem in BIEM. In the case of active cracks, both the exterior and interior problems need to be solved, because elastic waves are generated by fracturing with stress drop, and the growing crack boundaries scatter the incident waves from the outside of the cracks. The passive cracks and/or active cracks are randomly distributed in an infinite homogeneous elastic medium. Calculations of the complete waveform considering a single scatter show that the active crack has weak influence on the attenuation of first arrivals but strong influence on the amplitudes of coda waves, as compared with those due to the passive crack. In the active structures, multiple scattering between cracks and the waves triggered by fracturing strongly affect the amplitudes of first arrivals and coda waves. Compared to the case of the passive structures, the attenuation of initial phase is weak and the coda amplitudes decrease slowly.