Internal absorbing boundary conditions for closed-aperture wavefield decomposition in solid media with unknown interiors

Abstract

We present a method to create an internal numerical absorbing boundary within elastic solid media whose properties are largely unknown and use it to create the first wavefield separation method that retrieves all orders of outgoing elastic wavefield constituents for real data recorded on a closed free surface. The recorded data are injected into a numerical finite-difference (FD) simulation along a closed, transparent surface, and the new internal numerical absorbing boundary condition achieves high attenuation of the ingoing waves radiated from the injection surface. This internal wave absorption enables the data injection to radiate all outgoing waves for experimental domains that include arbitrary unknown scatterers in the interior. The injection-absorption-based separation scheme is validated using three-dimensional (3D) synthetic modeling and a real data experiment acquired using a 3D laser Doppler vibrometer on a granite rock. The wavefield separation method forms a key component of an elastic immersive wave experimentation laboratory, and the ability to numerically absorb ingoing scattered energy in an uncharacterized medium while still radiating the true outgoing energy is intriguing and may lead to other development and applications in the future.