3D traveltime calculation considering seismic velocity anisotropy

탄성파 속도 이방성을 고려한 3차원 주시 모델링

Due to the long tectonic history and the very complex geologic formations in Korea, the anisotropic characteristics of subsurface material may often change very greatly and locally. The algorithms for the travel time computation commonly used, however, may not give sufficiently precise results particularly for the complex and strong anisotropic model, since they are based on the two-dimensional (2D) earth and/or weak anisotropy assumptions. This study is intended to develope a three-dimensional (3D) modeling algorithm to precisely calculate the first arrival time in the complex anisotropic media. We assume 3D TTI (tilted transversely isotropy) medium having the arbitrary symmetry axis. The algorithm includes the 2D non-linear interpolation scheme to calculate the traveltimes inside the grid and the 3D traveltime mapping to fill the 3D model with first arrival times. The weak anisotropy assumption, moreover, can be overcome through devising a numerical approach of the steepest descent method in the calculation of minimum traveltime, instead of using approximate solution.