Variable-coordinate forward modeling of irregular surface based on dual-variable grid

The mapping method is a forward-modeling method that transforms the irregular surface to horizontal by mapping the rectangular grid as curved; moreover, the wave field calculations move from the physical domain to the calculation domain. The mapping method deals with the irregular surface and the low-velocity layer underneath it using a fine grid. For the deeper high-velocity layers, the use of a fine grid causes local oversampling. In addition, when the irregular surface is transformed to horizontal, the flattened interface below the surface is transformed to curved, which produces inaccurate modeling results because of the presence of ladder-like burrs in the simulated seismic wave. Thus, we propose the mapping method based on the dual-variable finite-difference staggered grid. The proposed method uses different size grid spacings in different regions and locally variable time steps to match the size variability of grid spacings. Numerical examples suggest that the proposed method requires less memory storage capacity and improves the computational efficiency compared with forward modeling methods based on the conventional grid.