Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Xian, China, March 2226, 2010

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Three-dimensional Magnetotelluric Forward Modeling for Static-shifted Model

Xiao-Zhong Tong, Jian-Xin Liu, Ya Sun, and Zhen-Wei Guo School of Info-physics Geomatics Engineering, Central South University Changsha 410083, China

Abstract Magnetotelluric static shift is a non-inductive change of the magnetotelluric apparent resistivity response that severely impairs the interpretation of data. For two-dimensional models, static shift is manifested in the data as vertical, parallel shifts of log-log apparent resistivity sounding curves, the impedance phase being unaected. In order to get the static shift features of three-dimensional model, we use the nite element method for three-dimensional magnetotelluric forward modeling. The nite element algorithm is very ecient, ant it has a lot of advantages: the high precision, the canonical process of solving problem, meeting the internal boundary condition automatically and adapting to all kinds of distribution of multi-substances. Through the simulation of the three-dimensional magnetotelluric static-shifted model, the results show that the apparent resistivity at every site is aected and the impedance phase is normal. 1. INTRODUCTION

Surcial bodies can severely distort magnetotelluric apparent resistivity data to arbitrarily low frequency. This distortion, known as the magnetotelluric static shift, is due to an electric eld generated from boundary charges on surcial in homogeneities, and persists throughout the entire magnetotelluric recording range. Static shift is manifested in the data as vertical, parallel shifts of log-log apparent resistivity sounding curves, the impedance phase being unaected [1, 2]. In order to get the static shift features of three-dimensional model, we use the nite element method for three-dimensional magnetotelluric forward modeling. Calculation of magnetotelluric responses for there-dimensional model of the earth must rely on numerical methods. These numerical solutions are obtained by approximating the relevant dierential or integral equations and solving a matrix equation. For magnetotelluric forward modeling, three methods have been used most for this approximation, namely, integral equation (IE) method [3, 4], nite dierence (FD) method [5, 6] and nite element (FE) method [79].
2. FORWARD MODELING

To obtain magnetotelluric (MT) responses at the surface, one must solve for the electric (E) and magnetic (H) elds simultaneously via the rst order Maxwells equations [10], E = iH H = E (1) (2)

subjected to appropriate boundary conditions at the top, bottom and sides of the domain. Here is the magnetic permeability of the free space (4 107 Hm1 ), is the angular frequency, and is the spatially variable electrical conductivity (the inverse of resistivity, ). The same equations, with addition of source terms (and dierent boundary conditions), must be solved for more general EM modeling problems. The couple system (1) and (2) can be solved the second order Maxwells equations, in E form, or, in H form, H = iH (4) For solving Eq. (3), through general variation method, the functional can be generated as follow F (E) = 1 2
V

E = iE

(3)

E) (

E) k 2 E E dV

(5)

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Utilizing the nite element method, we can derived the linear system as follows KE = 0 Considering surface boundary conditions, we can obtain the linear equation KE = p (7) (6)

The system of equation of our nite element algorithm is a large sparse, banded, symmetric, ill-conditioned, non-Hermitian complex matrix equation. Its condition number is far larger than 1, and it is a seriously ill-conditioned matrix. Solving this large scale ill-conditioned linear equation is very dicult, which can be solved using the Bi-CGSTAB method [11, 12]. Once the electric elds have been determined on the mesh, the magnetic elds, H can be determined from Faradays law, H= E/i (8)

The apparent resistivity a and the phase for xy- and yx-mode can be computed as 1 Ey|x a = Hx|y
3. SOLUTION STRATEGIES
2

= arctan

Im Ey|x Hx|y Re Ey|x Hx|y

(9)

For three-dimensional magnetotelluric forward problem, in order to improve computing eciency of nite element method, we chose non-uniform gird. The study area was classied as the target area and the extension area. The target area is the occurrence of regional geology, which is the area of data acquisition, and uniform grid is adopted. The grid step of the extension area by more than 1 is increasing, which was ensuring the accuracy of the circumstance, reducing post-score gird and saving computing time. Three-dimensional forward modeling non-uniform grid is shown in Figure 1. To solve the large scale ill-conditioned linear equation, we chose the Bi-CGSTAB algorithm with incomplete LU decomposition for preconditioning. The Bi-CGSTAB method uses two residual vectors, {s} and {r}, at each iteration, it was dened by {s} = {r} = {p} [K]{E}. When either of the convergence criteria, {s} 2 / {p} 2 or {r} 2 / {p} 2 , is satised given a specied tolerance , the iterative process ends. In the simulation show below, = 1010 .
4. NUMERICAL EXPERIMENT

The three-dimensional model has a relatively low resistivity contrast with a 4 4 0.03 km conductive block (1 m) embedding a homogeneous background earth (100 m). It is shown in Figure 2.

The extension area

The target area

Figure 1: The non-uniform grid.

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Xian, China, March 2226, 2010
y
(km)

435

2
-2 0.0 0.03

0.0
1 .m 100 . m

(km)

-2

0
1 .m

(km)

(km)

100 . m

-2

(a)

(b)

Figure 2: The three-dimensional static-shifted model. (a) Section view; (b) plan view.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)
Figure 3: The magnetotelluric responses for three-dimensional static-shifted model. (a) Apparent resistivity of xy-mode; (b) impedance phase of xy-mode; (c) apparent resistivity of yx-mode; (d) impedance phase of yx-mode.

In forward simulation, using 28 28 26 elements (including ve air layers) for the subdivision, the extension of the air layer is 90.75 km. The grid unit along the x direction of the interval (unit: km): 20 20 15 10 10 8 5 3 2 1 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 2 3 5 8 10 10 15 20 20

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The grid unit along the y direction of the interval (unit: km): 20 20 15 10 10 8 5 3 2 1 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 2 3 5 8 10 10 15 20 20 The grid unit along the z direction down of the interval (unit: km): 0.03 0.03 0.04 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 1 2 2 3 5 8 10 15 20 Extension of the air unit interval (unit: km): 0.75 2.25 6.75 20.25 60.75. We compute the three-dimensional magnetotelluric responses of the static-shifted model using fourteen periods (0.001, 0.003, 0.01, 0.03, 0.1, 0.3, 1, 5, 10, 15, 30, 50, 100 s). Figure 3 is the contour map of the apparent resistivity and impedance phase by three-dimensional FE method, which basically reects the geo-electrical parameters of the model. The apparent resistivity of xy-mode and yx-mode is aected and the impedance phase is normal. For two-dimensional models, static shift is manifested in the data as vertical, parallel shifts of log-log apparent resistivity sounding curves, the impedance phase being unaected. Also, the static shift mainly exists in the TM-mode magnetotelluric response. So, it can be show that two-mode apparent resistivity of three-dimensional static-shifted model is aected.
5. CONCLUSION

Surcial bodies can severely distort magnetotelluric apparent resistivity data to arbitrarily low frequency. This distortion, known as the magnetotelluric static shift, is due to an electric eld generated from boundary charges on surcial in homogeneities, and persists throughout the entire magnetotelluric recording range. Through the simulation of the three-dimensional magnetotelluric static-shifted model, the results show that the apparent resistivity at every site is aected and the impedance phase is normal.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This paper is supported by National Natural Science Foundation Project (60672042.) and the Ministry of Education Doctorate Foundation Project (20070533102).
REFERENCES

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