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oa Towards Real Earth Models - Computational Geophysics on Unstructured Tetrahedral Meshes?
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 76th EAGE Conference and Exhibition - Workshops, Jun 2014, cp-401-00063
- ISBN: 978-90-73834-90-3
Abstract
Using unstructured tetrahedral meshes to specify 3D geophysical Earth models has a numer of advantages. Such meshes can conform exactly to the triangularly tessellated wireframe surfaces in the 3D Earth models used by geologists. This offers up the possibility of both geophysicists and geologists working with a single unified Earth model. Unstructured tetrahedral meshes are extremely flexible, and so can accurately mimic arbitrarily complicated subsurface structures and topography. Also, in the context of electromagnetic methods, unstructured tetrahedral meshes can be very finely discretized around sources and yet can transition to a coarse discretization in the extremities of the solution domain without, in principle, affecting the quality of the mesh. However, using unstructured tetrahedral meshes for geophysical Earth models has its challenges. The tessellated surfaces in wireframe geological models are often not immediately suitable for computational techniques as they can contain intersecting facets and facets with extreme aspect ratios. Generating tetrahedral meshes that are of sufficient quality from real wireframe geological models can therefore be difficult. This presentation will aim to discuss the pros and cons of using unstructured tetrahedral meshes for geophysical Earth models, keeping in mind the complexities of the real subsurface that we are ultimately trying to represent.