A symplectic method for structure-preserving modelling of damped acoustic waves

Abstract

In this paper, a symplectic method for structure-preserving modelling of the damped acoustic wave equation is introduced. The equation is traditionally solved using non-symplectic schemes. However, these schemes corrupt some intrinsic properties of the equation such as the conservation of both precision and the damping property in long-term calculations. In the method presented, an explicit second-order symplectic scheme is used for the time discretization, whereas physical space is discretized by the discrete singular convolution differentiator. The performance of the proposed scheme has been tested and verified using numerical simulations of the attenuating scalar seismic-wave equation. Scalar seismic wave-field modelling experiments on a heterogeneous medium with both damping and high-parameter contrasts demonstrate the superior performance of the approach presented for suppression of numerical dispersion. Long-term computational experiments display the remarkable capability of the approach presented for long-time simulations of damped acoustic wave equations. Promising numerical results suggest that the approach is suitable for high-precision and long-time numerical simulations of wave equations with damping terms, as it has a structure-preserving property for the damping term.