A Targeted Quadrature Framework for Simulating Large-Scale 3D Anisotropic Electromagnetic Measurements

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel, efficient simulation method for 3D anisotropic electromagnetic measurements in boreholes, enabling real-time processing and improved subsurface imaging.

Contribution

It presents a new quadrature-based finite-volume method with block-reduction for simulating complex 3D anisotropic EM fields, including a local effective-medium approximation.

Findings

Method is accurate and conservative with anisotropic conductivity.

Efficient reduction of large systems enables real-time simulation.

Successful verification with synthetic North-Sea geology data.

Abstract

We develop a new, efficient, and accurate method to simulate frequency-domain borehole electromagnetic (EM) measurements acquired in the presence of three-dimensional (3D) variations of the anisotropic subsurface conductivity. The method is based on solving the quasi-static Maxwell equations with a goal-oriented finite-volume discretization via block-quadrature reduced-order modeling. Discretization is performed with a Lebedev grid that enables accurate and conservative solutions in the presence of any form of anisotropic electrical conductivity. Likewise, the method makes use of a new effective-medium approximation to locally account for non-conformal boundaries and large contrasts in electrical conductivity, especially in the vicinity of EM sources and receivers. The finite-volume discretization yields a large symmetric linear system of equations, which is reduced to a set of smaller structured problems via block Lanczos recursion. The formulation also enables the efficient calculation of the adjoint solution, which is necessary for gradient-based inversion of the measurements to estimate the associated spatial distribution of electrical conductivity, i.e., to solve the inverse problem. Specific applications and verifications of the new numerical simulation algorithm are considered for the case of borehole ultra-deep azimuthal resistivity measurements (UDAR) typically used for subsurface well geosteering and navigation. We verify the efficiency, robustness, and scalability of this approach using synthetic UDAR measurements acquired in a 3D formation inspired by North-Sea geology. The numerical experiments successfully verify the applicability of our modeling approach to real-time UDAR processing frameworks.