HR: 0800h
AN: S21C-0715    [Abstracts]
TI: Seismic wave propagation in complex geological media: The hexahedral grid generation problem
AU: * casarotti, e
EM: casarotti@ingv.it
AF: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, via di vigna murata 605, Rome, 00162, Italy
AU: Stupazzini, M
EM: stupa@geophysik.uni-muenchen.de
AF: Department of Earth- and Environmental Sciences, Geophysics section, Ludwig- Maximilians-Universitat, Theresienstrasse 41, Munich, 80333, Germany
AU: Lee, S
EM: sjlee@earth.sinica.edu.tw
AF: Institute of Earth Science, Academia Sinica, No.128, Section2, Acedemia Road, Nankang, Taipei, 115, Taiwan
AU: Komatitsch, D
EM: dimitri.komatitsch@univ-pau.fr
AF: Laboratoire de Modélisation et d'Imagerie en Géosciences UMR 5212, Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, Bātiment IPRA - Avenue de l'Université, Pau, 64013, France
AU: Piersanti, A
EM: piersanti@ingv.it
AF: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, via di vigna murata 605, Rome, 00162, Italy
AU: Tromp, J
EM: jtromp@caltech.edu
AF: Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, United States
AB: Unstructured hexahedral mesh generation is a critical part of the modeling process in the Spectral-Element Method (SEM). We present some examples of seismic wave propagation in complex geological models, automatically meshed on a parallel machine based upon CUBIT (Sandia Laboratory, cubit.sandia.gov), an advanced 3D unstructured hexahedral mesh generator that offers new opportunities for seismologist to design, assess, and improve the quality of a mesh in terms of both geometrical and numerical accuracy. The main goal is to provide useful tools for understanding seismic phenomena due to surface topography and subsurface structures such as low wave-speed sedimentary basins. Our examples cover several typical geophysical problems: 1) "layer-cake" volumes with high-resolution topography and complex solid-solid interfaces, and 2) models with an embedded sedimentary basin. We discuss the impact of the design of the mesh on the simulation results.
DE: 0545 Modeling (4255)
DE: 3285 Wave propagation (0689, 2487, 4275, 4455, 6934)
DE: 7290 Computational seismology
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting