Seismic propagation simulation in complex media with non-rectangular irregular-grid finite-difference

This paper presents a finite-difference (FD) method with spatially non-rectangular irregular grids to simulate the elastic wave propagation. Staggered irregular grid finite difference operators with a second-order time and spatial accuracy are used to approximate the velocity-stress elastic wave equations. This method is very simple and the cost of computing time is not much. Complicated geometries like curved thin layers, cased borehole and nonplanar interfaces may be treated with non-rectangular irregular grids in a more flexible way. Unlike the multi-grid scheme, this method requires no interpolation between the fine and coarse grids and all grids are computed at the same spatial iteration. Compared with the rectangular irregular grid FD, the spurious diffractions from "staircase" interfaces can easily be eliminated without using finer grids. Dispersion and stability conditions of the proposed method can be established in a similar form as for the rectangular irregular grid scheme. The Higdon's absorbing boundary condition is adopted to eliminate boundary reflections. Numerical simulations show that this method has satisfactory stability and accuracy in simulating wave propagation near rough solid-fluid interfaces. The computation costs are less than those using a regular grid and rectangular grid FD method.