Geophysical Prospecting - Current Issue

The viscosity of a medium affects the amplitude attenuation and velocity dispersion of seismic waves. Therefore, it is necessary to consider these factors during migration. First, to eliminate the viscous effect of a medium, we combine the Futterman model with the integral equation of the De Wolf approximation to construct a compensation operator of the De Wolf approximation for a visco‐acoustic medium. Next, we use the visco‐acoustic screen approximation method to realize the continuation operator then establish a prestack depth migration algorithm. Finally, an error analysis, impulse response test and model test are performed. The results show that three different generalized visco‐acoustic screen methods (phase screen method, generalized screen method and extended local Born Fourier method) can satisfactorily compensate for the attenuation of deep interface amplitude. Among these methods, the visco‐acoustic extended local Born Fourier method has the highest accuracy and the best compensation effect.

Quantitative interpretation of the data from controlled‐source electromagnetic methods, whether via forward modelling or inversion, requires solving a considerable number of forward problems, and multigrid methods are often employed to accelerate the solving process. In this study, a new extrapolation cascadic multigrid method is employed to solve the large sparse complex linear system arising from the finite element approximation of Maxwell's equations using secondary potentials. The equations using secondary potentials are discretized by the classic nodal finite element method on nonuniform rectilinear grids. The resulting linear systems are solved by the extrapolation cascadic multigrid method with a new prolongation operator and preconditioned Stabilized bi‐conjugate gradient method smoother. High‐order interpolation and global extrapolation formulas are utilized to construct the multigrid prolongation operator. The extrapolation cascadic multigrid method with the new prolongation operator is easier to implement and more flexible in application than the original one. Finally, several synthetic examples including layered models, models with anisotropic anomalous bodies or layers, are used to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. Numerical results show that the extrapolation cascadic multigrid method improves the efficiency of 3D controlled‐source electromagnetic forward modelling a lot, compared with traditional iterative solvers and some state‐of‐the‐art methods or software (e.g., preconditioned flexible generalized minimal residual method, emg3d) in the considered models and grid settings. The efficiency benefit is more evident as the number of unknowns increases, and the proposed method is more efficient at low frequencies. The extrapolation cascadic multigrid method can also be used to solve systems of equations arising from related applications, such as induction logging, airborne electromagnetic, etc.

Cepstral decomposition is beneficial for highlighting certain geological features within the particular quefrency bands which may be deeply buried within the wide quefrency range of the seismic data. Converting seismic traces into the corresponding cepstrum components can better analyse some characteristics of underground strata than the traditional spectral decomposition methods. We propose the sliding windowed differential cepstrum–based coherence analysis approach to delineate the fault features. First, the data are decomposed using a sliding windowed differential cepstrum, which results in multi‐cepstrum data of corresponding quefrency of certain bandwidth. These different multi‐cepstrum data may highlight the different stratigraphic features in a certain quefrency band. We select the first‐order common quefrency volume as the featured attribute. Then, eigenstructure‐based coherence is applied on the first‐order common quefrency data volume to statistically obtain the fault detection result with a finer and sharper image. Synthetic data and field data examples show that the proposed method has the ability to better visualize all the possible subtle and minor faults present in the data more accurately and discernibly than the traditional coherence method. Compared with the ant‐tracking method, the proposed method is more effective in revealing the major faults. It is hoped that this work will complement current fault detection methods with the addition of the cepstral‐based method.