3D frequency airborne electromagnetic modeling including topography with direct solution

Three-dimensional modeling of frequency airborne electromagnetic data is vital to improve the understanding of electromagnetic (EM) responses collected in increasingly complex geologic settings. We developed a modeling scheme for 3D airborne electromagnetic modeling in frequency domain with topography using edge finite element. The rectangular mesh can be transformed to hexahedral in order to simulate the topography effect. The finite element algorithm uses a single edge shape function at each edge of hexahedral elements, guaranteeing the continuity of the tangential electric field while conserving the continuity of magnetic flux at boundaries. Sources singularities are eliminated through a secondary-field approach, in which the primary fields are computed analytically for a homogeneous or a 1D layered background; the secondary fields are computed using edge finite element. The solution of the linear system of equations was obtained using a massive parallel multifrontal solver, because such solver are robust for indefinite and ill-conditioned linear systems. Parallel computing were investigated for their use in mitigating the computational overburden associated with the use of a direct solver, and of its feasibility for 3D frequency airborne electromagnetic forward modeling with the edge finite element. For the multisource problem, when using a direct solver, only competitive if the same factors are used to achieve a solution for multi right-hand sides. We tested our proposed approach using 1D and 3D synthetic models, and they demonstrated it is robust and suitable for 3D frequency airborne electromagnetic modeling. The codes could thus be used to help design new survey, as well to estimate subsurface conductivities through the implementation of an appropriate inversion scheme.