CRPC-TR95556: Efficient Free-Surface Kirchhoff Modeling

Lucio Santos (State University of Campinas, BRAZIL)
William Symes (Rice University)

The aim of this work is to introduce a new scheme to apply Kirchhoff
modeling efficiently to a 2-D acoustic model with a free surface and
with irregular source and receiver locations. We consider as data all
the traveltimes and amplitudes of each ray connecting points below
some datum depth and points over this depth. We derive a new
expression for the Kirchhoff formula which uses these computed
traveltimes and amplitudes only. Given accurate components, the
primary reflection seismograms computed via this new approach for the
Kirchhoff method is remarkably accurate and less expensive than the
usual technique. We also compare Kirchhoff seismograms with those
produced from the same model by finite-difference solution of the
linearized acoustic wave equation.

NOTE: Also available as CAAM-TR95-17 from the Department of
Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University.