High-order rotated staggered finite difference modeling of 3D elastic wave propagation in general anisotropic media

Abstract

We analyze the dispersion properties and stability conditions of the high-order convolutional finite difference operators and compare them with the conventional finite difference schemes. We observe that the convolutional finite difference method has better dispersion properties and becomes more efficient than the conventional finite difference method with the increasing order of accuracy. This makes the high-order convolutional operator a good choice for anisotropic elastic wave simulations on rotated staggered grids since its enhanced dispersion properties can help to suppress the numerical dispersion error that is inherent in the rotated staggered grid structure and its efficiency can help us tackle 3D problems cost-effectively.