Numerical analysis of scattering in a viscoelastic medium

Shahpoor Moradi, Hassan Khaniani, Kristopher A. Innanen

Recently we have developed a theoretical picture of viscoelastic scattering applicable to seismic waves propagating in arbitrary multidimensional geological volumes. The purpose of this research is to begin to integrate this theoretical analysis with numerical analysis. That combination will permit very general versions of attenuation/Q related analysis, processing, and inversion in multicomponent seismic to be formulated. Here we used the code developed by Martin and Komatitsch (2009) to simulate the reflections caused by general viscoelastic contrasts designed to be comparable to the results from the Born approximation. We apply the code to a viscoelastic geological model involving a contrast between two layers with different elastic and anelastic properties. We show that the anelastic contrasts generate reflection amplitudes which quantitatively are in agreement with those derived theoretically by Moradi and Innanen (2013).