An approximate hybrid method for modeling of electromagnetic scattering from an underground target, 2010

Advisors: Trond Mannseth

Short description of project:

The detection of a potential petroleum reservoir is achieved through inversion of electromagnetic data acquired in sea floor receivers.  The main focus of this thesis is to develop and analyze a fast and accurate hybrid method, simplified IE (SIE) modeling, for modeling of electromagnetic scattering from an underground target. The method consists of solving a finite volume problem in a localized region containing the target, and using the IE method to obtain the field outside that region. The hybrid method thus replaces the dense-matrix part of the rigorous IE method by sparse matrix calculations based on an approximation of Maxwell’s Equations. The thesis shows that both theoretical and practical computational performance of SIE is orders of magnitude better than that of rigorous IE on large-scale problems. Also, SIE produced excellent accuracy for typical CSEM frequencies. The thesis presents a novel order-of-magnitude analysis for Maxwell’s equations and a proper assessment of the range of validity of a novel approximate method for CSEM.

Link to thesis at BORA-UiB: Link