An Efficient Approach for Simulating Wave Propagation with the Boundary Element Method in Multilayered Media with Irregular Interfaces

The boundary element method (BEM) is a useful method for seismic-wave simulation in a stratified medium with irregular interfaces. However, the central processing unit (CPU) time required for the traditional BEM method increases exponentially as the number of layers increases. Ge and Chen (2007) presented a BEM with global reflection/transmission matrix propagators that can prevent excessive requirement of both computer memory and CPU time. In this article, we present a more efficient approach for this method. In the new approach, the global matrix propagators can be calculated directly, which can further increase the efficiency by about 40%.Geochemistry & GeophysicsSCI(E)EI11ARTICLE63007-30169