Type of publication
Article in journal
Year of publication
2020
Publisher
Royal Astronomical Society
Link to the publication
Link to the repository
Citation
Solvi Thrastarson, Martin van Driel, Lion Krischer, Christian Boehm, Michael Afanasiev, Dirk-Philip van Herwaarden, Andreas Fichtner, Accelerating numerical wave propagation by wavefield adapted meshes. Part II: full-waveform inversion, Geophysical Journal International, Volume 221, Issue 3, June 2020, Pages 1591–1604, https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggaa065, Accelerating numerical wave propagation by wavefield adapted meshes. Part II: full-waveform inversion, Geophysical Journal International, Volume 221, Issue 3, June 2020, Pages 1591–1604, https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggaa065
Short summary
We present a novel full-waveform inversion (FWI) approach which can reduce the computational cost by up to an order of magnitude compared to conventional approaches, provided that variations in medium properties are sufficiently smooth. Our method is based on the usage of wavefield adapted meshes which accelerate the forward and adjoint wavefield simulations. By adapting the mesh to the expected complexity and smoothness of the wavefield, the number of elements needed to discretize the wave equation can be greatly reduced. This leads to spectral-element meshes which are optimally tailored to source locations and medium complexity. We demonstrate a workflow which opens up the possibility to use these meshes in FWI and show the computational advantages of the approach. We provide examples in 2-D and 3-D to illustrate the concept, describe how the new workflow deviates from the standard FWI workflow, and explain the additional steps in detail.