Finite Element Modeling of Electroseismics and Seismoelectrics

Abstract

In this chapter we describe a set of finite element formulations employed to approximate the solution to an extension to partially saturated porous media of Pride’s equations, which is one of the most widespread theoretical frames that model the coupled electromagnetics and acoustics of saturated porous media. We also show how these numerical algorithms can be implemented on multicore computers, and analyze their performance, observing that the parallel efficiency of the algorithms decays slower when the resources of each computing core are used as close to their maximum as possible. Further, we perform a study of two-dimensional PSVTM electroseismic conversions in a timelapse carbon dioxide geological deposition monitoring scenario, setting the electromagnetic source in depth, and measuring the seismic responses both in wells and at the surface. We observe that, contrary to what is known from standard field settings, the interface responses play no important role in elucidating the CO2 plume behavior, and that the in-depth converted signals convey information about the carbon dioxide saturation in the plume.