Electromagnetic Forward Modeling and Inversion for Geophysical Exploration

Electromagnetic forward modeling and inversion methods have extensive applications in geophysical exploration, and large-scale controlled-source electromagnetic method has recently drawed lots of attention. However, to obtain a rigorous and efficient forward solver for this large-scale three-dimensional problem is difficult, since it usually requires to solve for a large number of unknowns from a system of equations describing the complicate scattering behavior of electromagnetic waves that happened within inhomogeneous media. As for the development of an efficient inversion solver, because of the nonlinear, non-unique and ill-posed properties of the problem, it is also a very challenging task.

In the first part of this dissertation, a fast three-dimensional nonlinear reconstruction method is proposed for controlled-source electromagnetic method. The borehole-to-surface and airborne electromagnetic survey methods are investigated using synthetic data. In this work, it is assumed that there is only electric contrast between the inhomogeneous object and the layered background medium, for the reason that the electric contrast is much more dominant than magnetic contrast in most cases of the earth formation. Therefore, only the EFIE is needed to solve. While the forward scattering problem is solved by the stabilized bi-conjugate gradient FFT (BCGS-FFT) method to give a rigorous and efficient modeling, the Bore iterative method along with the multiplicative regularization technique is used in the inversion through frequency hopping. In the inversion, to speed up the expensive computation of the sensitivity matrix relating every receiver station to every unknown element, a fast field evaluation (FFE) technique is proposed using the symmetry property of the layered medium Green's function combined with a database strategy. The conjugate-gradient method is then applied to minimize the cost function after each iteration. Due to the benefits of using 3D FFT acceleration, the proposed FFE technique as well as the recursive matrix method combined with an interpolation technique to evaluate the LMGF, the developed inversion solver is highly efficient, and requires very low computation time and memory. Numerical experiments for both 3D forward modeling and conductivity inversion are presented to show the accuracy and efficiency of the method.

Some recent research on artificial nanoparticles have demonstrated the improved performance in geophysical imaging using magnetodielectric materials with enhanced electric and magnetic contrasts. This gives a promising perspective to the future geophysical exploration by infusing well-designed artificial magnetodielectric materials into the subsurface objects, so that a significantly improved imaging can be achieved. As a preparation for this promising application, the second part of the dissertation presents an efficient method to solve the scattering problem of magnetodielectric materials with general anisotropy that are embedded in layered media. In this work, the volume integral equation is chosen as the target equation to solve, since it solves for fields in inhomogeneous media with less number of unknowns than the finite element method. However, for complicated materials as magnetodielectric materials with general anisotropy, it is a very challenging task, because it requires to simultaneously solve the electric field integral equation (EFIE) and magnetic field integral equation (MFIE). Besides that, the numerous evaluation of the layered medium Green's function (LMGF) for the stratified background formation adds on the difficulty and complexity of the problem. To my knowledge, there is no existing fast solver for the similar problem. In this dissertation, using the mixed order stabilized biconjugate-gradient fast Fourier transform (mixed-order BCGS-FFT) method, a fast forward modeling method is developed to solve this challenging problem. Several numerical examples are performed to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

Besides the above mentioned two topics, one-dimensional inversion method is presented in the third part to determine the tilted triaxial conductivity tensor in a dipping layered formation using triaxial induction measurements. The tilted triaxial conductivity tensor is described by three conductivity components and three Euler angles. Based on my knowledge, due to the highly nonlinear and ill-posed nature of the inverse problem, this study serves as the first work that investigates on the subject. There are six principal coordinate systems that can give the same conductivity tensor. Permutation is performed to eliminate the ambiguity of inversion results caused by the ambiguity of the principal coordinate system. Three new Euler angles after permutation for each layer can be found by solving a nonlinear equation. Numerical experiments are conducted on synthetic models to study the feasibility of determining triaxially anisotropic conductivity tensor from triaxial induction data. This project is accomplished during my internship in the Houston Formation Evaluation Integration Center (HFE) at Schlumberger, a world-leading oilfield service company.