Self-adaptive numerical dispersion suppressed method for shallow seismic simulation

Abstract

Near-surface in seismic exploration generally refers to the low deceleration zone and a section of stratum below it, which can be described in geophysical language as “low velocity”, “low Q”, and “Free surface”, etc. Due to the presence of low-velocity layers in near-surface, shallow seismic simulation is plagued by numerical dispersion. Numerical dispersion affects the accuracy of seismic wave simulation, especially severe in shallow areas containing low-velocity layers. To improve the simulated quality, denser grids or higher-order difference schemes are used, but both of which would seriously reduce computational efficiency, especially for frequency-domain numerical modeling. Differentiation is replaced by difference in wave field simulation, which would inevitably result in numerical errors. These numerical errors are manifested as the difference between the phase velocity of the discretized wave field and the medium velocity. The waves with different wavenumber components have different phase velocities, and the larger the wavenumber, the more that its phase velocity lags the group velocity. Based on this theoretical analysis, a regularization factor is added to the frequency-domain acoustic wave equation to correct the phase velocity of high wavenumber components. According to the Von Neumann stability requirements, a regularization factor that adaptively changes with simulation parameters is derived. Compared to the fixed regularization factor, adaptive regularization factor can better match the velocity field and protect the effective wave field to the maximum extent while suppressing numerical dispersion. The improved acoustic wave equation can effectively suppress numerical dispersion without increasing the number of grids. Different numerical models demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the improved acoustic equation with the adaptive regularization factor for suppressing numerical dispersion.