Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration ISSN:1229-1064(Print) 2384-051X(Online) 지구물리와 물리탐사

The first-arrival traveltime calculation method based on the damped wave equation overcomes the shortcomings of ray-tracing methods. Since this algorithm needs to solve the damped wave equation, numerical modeling is essential. However, it is not desirable to use the finite-difference method (FDM), which has good computational efficiency, for simulating the land seismic data because of irregular topography. Thus, the finite-element method (FEM) which requires higher computational cost than FDM has been used to correctly describe the irregular topography. In this study, we computed first-arrival traveltimes in an irregular topographic model using FDM incorporating embedded boundary method (EBM) to overcome this problem. To verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed algorithm, we compared our results with those of FEM. As a result, the proposed method using EBM not only provided the same accuracy as the FEM but also showed the improved computational efficiency.