Large-scale frequency-domain seismic wave modeling on {\it{h}}-adaptive tetrahedral meshes with iterative solver and multi-level domain-decomposition preconditioners

TL;DR

This paper presents an efficient frequency-domain seismic wave modeling method using $h$-adaptive tetrahedral meshes, iterative solvers, and multi-level domain-decomposition preconditioners to improve scalability and convergence for large 3D problems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combination of $h$-adaptive finite element discretization with advanced preconditioning for Helmholtz problems in seismic modeling.

Findings

Achieves accurate wave modeling up to 20 Hz on large models

Demonstrates scalable convergence with the proposed solver

Validates method on complex geological models

Abstract

Frequency-domain full-waveform inversion (FWI) is suitable for long-offset stationary-recording acquisition, since reliable subsurface models can be reconstructed with a few frequencies and attenuation is easily implemented without computational overhead. In the frequency domain, wave modeling is a Helmholtz-type boundary-value problem which requires to solve a large and sparse system of linear equations per frequency with multiple right-hand sides (sources). This system can be solved with direct or iterative methods. While the former are suitable for FWI application on 3D dense OBC acquisitions covering spatial domains of moderate size, the later should be the approach of choice for sparse node acquisitions covering large domains (more than 50 millions of unknowns). Fast convergence of iterative solvers for Helmholtz problems remains however challenging in high frequency regime due to the non definiteness of the Helmholtz operator, on one side and on the discretization constraints in order to minimize the dispersion error for a given frequency, on the other side, hence requiring efficient preconditioners. In this study, we use the Krylov subspace GMRES iterative solver combined with a two-level domain-decomposition preconditioner. Discretization relies on continuous Lagrange finite elements of order 3 on unstructured tetrahedral meshes to comply with complex geometries and adapt the size of the elements to the local wavelength ($h$-adaptivity). We assess the accuracy, the convergence and the scalability of our method with the acoustic 3D SEG/EAGE Overthrust model up to a frequency of 20~Hz.