Study on the Improved Method for Calculating Traveltime and Raypath of Multistage Fast Marching Method

Abstract

The traditional Fast Marching Method (FMM) based on the finite-difference scheme can solve the traveltime of first arrivals; however, the accuracy and efficiency of FMM are usually affected by the finite-difference schemes and grid size. The Vidale finite-difference scheme and double-grid technology are adopted to replace the traditional first-order and second-order finite-difference schemes in this paper to improve the computation accuracy and efficiency. The traditional FMM does not provide the corresponding raypath calculation methods, and in view of the interoperability of FMM and the linear travel time interpolation (LTI) method, we introduce the linear interpolation method into FMM ray tracing to compute the raypath and take into consideration the secondary source located inside the grid cell to improve the accuracy and stability of the raypath calculation. With these measures and the application of the multistage approach, we successfully completed the improved Multistage FMM (MFMM) ray tracing, which can track first arrivals and any type of primary and multiple reflection waves. Through the theoretical and actual field model tests, the computation accuracy and efficiency of the improved MFMM are proven to be higher than that under traditional first-order and second-order finite-difference schemes, the correctness and effectiveness of the interpolation method for raypath calculation are verified, and the improved MFMM has demonstrated good adaptability and stability for complex models. The improvements for the MFMM in this paper are successfully applied in two-dimensional cases and need to be extended to three-dimensional situations.