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2.5D forward modeling and inversion of frequency-domain airborne electromagnetic data

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Abstract

Frequency-domain airborne electromagnetics is a proven geophysical exploration method. Presently, the interpretation is mainly based on resistivity—depth imaging and one-dimensional layered inversion; nevertheless, it is difficult to obtain satisfactory results for two- or three-dimensional complex earth structures using 1D methods. 3D forward modeling and inversion can be used but are hampered by computational limitations because of the large number of data. Thus, we developed a 2.5D frequency-domain airborne electromagnetic forward modeling and inversion algorithm. To eliminate the source singularities in the numerical simulations, we split the fields into primary and secondary fields. The primary fields are calculated using homogeneous or layered models with analytical solutions, and the secondary (scattered) fields are solved by the finite-element method. The linear system of equations is solved by using the large-scale sparse matrix parallel direct solver, which greatly improves the computational efficiency. The inversion algorithm was based on damping least-squares and singular value decomposition and combined the pseudo forward modeling and reciprocity principle to compute the Jacobian matrix. Synthetic and field data were used to test the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Geo-exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun, 130026, China

    Wen-Ben Li, Zhao-Fa Zeng, Jing Li, Xiong Chen, Kun Wang & Zhao Xia

Authors
  1. Wen-Ben Li
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  2. Zhao-Fa Zeng
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  3. Jing Li
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  4. Xiong Chen
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  5. Kun Wang
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  6. Zhao Xia
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhao-Fa Zeng.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Doctoral Fund Project of the Ministry of Education (No. 20130061110060 class tutors), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41504083), and National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (No. 2013CB429805).

Li Wen-Ben: Ph.D. candidate, he graduated from Jilin University in 2011. His main research interests are electromagnetic forward modeling and inversion.

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Li, WB., Zeng, ZF., Li, J. et al. 2.5D forward modeling and inversion of frequency-domain airborne electromagnetic data. Appl. Geophys. 13, 37–47 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11770-016-0548-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11770-016-0548-y

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