NANJING INSTITUTE OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING AND INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS PUBLISHING JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICS AND ENGINEERING

J. Geophys. Eng. 2 (2005) 54–63 doi:10.1088/1742-2132/2/1/008

‘Shortest path’ ray tracing for most

general 2D/3D anisotropic media
Bing Zhou and S A Greenhalgh
Department of Physics, The University of Adelaide, North Terrace, 5005 SA, Australia
E-mail: bing.zhou@adelaide.edu.au

Received 30 December 2004

Accepted for publication 18 February 2005

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Published 10 March 2005
Online at stacks.iop.org/JGE/2/54

Abstract
This paper presents a simple method for seismic ray tracing in a general anisotropic medium,
which may include complex structures and compound materials, such as water, isotropic and
anisotropic rocks, fine-layers and parallel small cracked blocks. The anisotropy may be
defined by up to 21 density-normalized elastic moduli which vary with spatial position. The
method presented is a direct extension of the irregular network ‘shortest path’ method for an
isotropic solid. For this extension, we first apply analytic solutions of the wave velocities
(phase velocity and group velocity) for a general anisotropic medium as a ‘transform’ or
‘mapping’ operator to convert the elastic-moduli-described medium into the
direction-dependent group-velocity models for the three independent wave modes (qP, qS1,
qS2). We then utilize the ‘shortest path’ method to trace raypaths through such group-velocity
models for the three modes. We also give an alternative derivation of Fermat’s principle of
stationary time in anisotropic media. With this method, the travel times and ray paths of the
first arrivals emanating from a source to multiple receivers can be simultaneously obtained for
the three modes. Some 2D/3D numerical experiments are performed to show the accuracy and
applicability of the method. From these results, one can see that the method may be applied to
kinematic modelling and inversion in 2D and 3D seismic or seismological applications.

Keywords: seismic ray tracing, shortest path, anisotropy, first arrival, 2D/3D media

1. Introduction In the last two decades, great achievements have been

In reality, seismic anisotropy is frequently encountered in the
exploration of sedimentary basins, and scientific studies of
the lithosphere and deep Earth. Anisotropy can be caused
by a variety of ordering processes such as periodic layering,
parallel cracks, orientation of grains and rock foliation
(Berryman 1979, Helbig 1981, Schoenberg 1983, Crampin
1984, Thomsen 1986). In these media, the wave behaviour
is quite different from that in isotropic media (Musgrave
1970, Helbig 1994). The most important fact is that there
exist three wave modes (qP, qS1, qS2) propagating with their
own wave velocities (phase/group velocity) and polarization,
which depend on the wave direction. To process and interpret
seismic data in exploration geophysics or in seismological
applications, we need more powerful tools to simulate the
kinematic and dynamic properties of wave propagation in
anisotropic media.
made in theoretical analysis, numerical modelling and data
inversion for seismic anisotropy, especially for simplified
anisotropic media, i.e. transverse isotropy. For example,
Daley and Hron (1977) derived the reflection/transmission
coefficients and the phase/group velocities for layered
anisotropic media. Berryman (1979) studied long-wave
elastic anisotropy and obtained a relation between the group
velocity and phase velocity of an anisotropic medium. To
investigate the wave response of an anisotropic medium,
Booth and Crampin (1983) and Fryer and Frazer (1984,
1987) used the reflectivity method to model seismic waves in
stratified anisotropic media. Also, some advanced numerical
methods, such as the finite difference method (Faria and Stoffa
1994a, Carcione 1995), the finite element method (Zhang and
Verschuur 2002) and the spectral element method (Komatitsch
and Tromp 1999) have been applied to calculate seismograms
for complex anisotropic media.

1742-2132/05/010054+10$30.00 © 2005 Nanjing Institute of Geophysical Prospecting Printed in the UK 54


Ray tracing is an effective way to process and interpret
seismic data in practice. It may be used for seismic
tomography (e.g. Chapman and Pratt 1992, Pratt and Chapman
1992, Wang and Houseman 1995), seismic migration
(Alkhalifah and Larner 1994, Faria and Stoffa 1994a, 1994b)
and synthetic seismograms (Červeny 1972, Guest and Kendall
1993, Rüger and Alkhalifah 1996). The principal advantage
of ray tracing is the individual computation of the travel times
and the ray paths for the three wave modes. This provides
the possibility of separately recovering media information
from seismic observations. To simulate the ray paths and
travel times in anisotropic media, Červeny (1972) suggested
applying a numerical method, such as the finite difference
method, to the partial differential equations he had earlier
given. Unfortunately, the partial differential equations for
ray tracing in a general anisotropic medium are much more
complicated than the those for an isotropic medium, or a
transversely isotropic medium involving a vertical axis of
symmetry (so-called VTI media). Červeny and Firbas (1984)
demonstrated a linearized approach to travel time computation
for a general anisotropic medium. Gajewski and Psencik
(1987) presented a 3D ray tracing method in a layered structure
of a general anisotropic medium. Shearer and Chapman (1988,
1989) gave the solutions of the ray path and travel time in
a linear gradient anisotropic medium, which may approach
the kinematic property of a cell in general anisotropic media.
Such numerical solvers of the complicated equations use a
target (receiver)-shooting scheme (tracing a ray path with a
trial of the phase-slowness direction), but they often miss the
target in a complex anisotropic medium. Actually, many other
researchers interested in anisotropic ray tracing have focused
on VTI media for two main reasons. Firstly, the structural
similarity of minerals in sedimentary rock such as shale to
the hexagonal crystal. Some ordering in the structure of rocks
(parallel cracked and fine-layered rocks) has similar properties
to the VTI medium (Schoenberg 1983, Crampin 1984).
Secondly, there is simplicity in the mathematical treatment
for the eigenvalues (or phase velocities), eigenvectors (used to
find the group velocities) and shear-wave singularity directions
(Vavryčuk 2001) for wave propagation in an anisotropic
medium. To define such VTI media, only five elastic moduli
are involved and simple decoupled qSV and qSH polarization
modes may be associated with the two quasi-shear waves qS1
and qS2. The VTI treatment leads to relatively simple analytic
expressions for the kinematic and dynamic quantities which
characterize the waves, and avoids the daunting algebraic
complexity which accompanies more general anisotropic
media. For example, Faria and Stoffa (1994b) presented an
iterative approach to the travel time field for a 2D/3D VTI
medium. Rüger and Alkhalifah (1996) applied simple versions
of the eigenvectors in a VTI medium and developed an efficient
2D ray tracing method. In recent years, Ettrich and Gajewski
(1998) suggested a perturbation theory to compute travel times
in VTI media, starting with a background velocity model that
exhibits elliptical anisotropy. Cardarelli and Cerreto (2002)
presented a ray tracing method in elliptical anisotropic media
using linear travel time interpolation. Elliptical anisotropy
is a simplified model of VTI media and results in a simple
Anisotropic ray tracing
dip-angle-dependent expression for handling group velocity
through its components. Qian and Symes (2002) developed
a finite difference method to calculate the travel time of qP
waves in anisotropic media. Alkhalifah (2002) demonstrated
another travel time computation scheme by solving a linearized
eikonal equation for 2D and 3D VTI media. However, these
travel time computation methods have difficulty in giving the
ray paths due to the discrepancy between the phase-slowness
vector (the gradient of travel time ∇τ ) and the group-velocity
vector (direction of the ray path) in an anisotropic medium.
One cannot simply calculate the gradient of travel time to
obtain the ray paths for all pairs of shots and receivers in
anisotropic media. In addition, the subsurface structure may be
a composite assembly of VTI media with variable orientations
of the symmetry axis due to folding, disruption and other
tectonic movements subsequent to deposition. This means
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that the direction of the symmetry axis is not constant (e.g.
vertical) in a complex anisotropic medium.
In this paper, we present a ray tracing method applicable
to computing the travel time of each of the three modes, and
tracing the ray paths in arbitrary anisotropic media, which may
consist of acoustic, isotropic or anisotropic media defined by
up to 21 elastic moduli and composed of complex structure
and different materials. This method is actually an extension
of the so-called ‘shortest path method’ (SPM) for an isotropic
medium (Moser 1991) to an anisotropic medium. The main
advantages of the method are its simplicity, robustness and
ability to deal with a general anisotropic medium (e.g., dipping
transversely isotropic solid, orthorhombic solid, etc). This
method does not necessarily determine the eigenvectors for
the shear-wave singularity directions but mitigates the shear-
wave singularity problem in ray tracing (Vavryčuk 2001), and
guarantees that first-arrival travel times and ray paths for all
three wave modes (qP, qS1, qS2) can be computed, unlike some
other methods which are restricted to one mode and sometimes
miss the target receiver.
2. Shortest path approach
SPM originated in network theory (Dijkstra 1959) and was
applied by Nakanishi and Yamaguchi (1986) and Moser (1991)
to seismic ray tracing. The main advantages of SPM are
its simplicity, capacity for simultaneous calculation of the
first arrival times and the associated ray paths of each mode
without missing any ‘target’ (receiver) in a complex geological
structure. To improve the computational efficiency of SPM,
Klimeš and Kvasnička (1994) employed a regular network and
modified the original SPM algorithm so that they achieved
a run-time at least five times faster than Moser’s method
in 3D computations. Recently, Bai (2004) and Zhao et al
(2004) demonstrated an irregular network SPM and an efficient
algorithm that requires significantly less memory and less CPU
time than Klimeš and Kvasnička’s scheme. Here, we extend
the irregular network SPM for more general anisotropic media.
In this extension, we first apply an analytic method to compute
the wave velocities (phase velocity and group velocity) for a
general anisotropic medium. The computation is employed to
transform the elastic moduli space (from 2 up to 21 moduli)
55
B Zhou and S A Greenhalgh

into the wave velocity (group velocity) space, in which we (θ0 , ϕ0 ) for the symmetry axis of the medium, one can easily
then adapt SPM for determining the travel times and the ray obtain the following group-velocity vector:
paths diverging from a source to all the nodes of the network.  
U(m) = Uh(m) Hxn ex  + Hyn ey  + Uv(m) ez (6)
This ray tracing method is valid for computing the first arrival
travel time and giving the ray paths of the first arrivals for the where
three wave modes (qP, qS1, qS2). ∂c(m)
Uh(m) = c(m) sin ϑ + cos ϑ ,
∂ϑ
3. Anisotropic wave velocity model ∂c(m)
Uv(m) = c(m) cos ϑ − sin θ ,
∂ϑ
The kinematic properties of seismic waves are governed by
the Christoffel equation (Červeny 1972), ϑ = (n · ez )
det[aij kl (x)ni nl − c2 δj k ] = 0. (1) 
Hxn = (n · ex  ) (n · ex  )2 + (n · ey  )2 , (7)
Here, the fourth-order tensor, aij kl (x), denotes the density- 
normalized elastic moduli that may be functions of the spatial Hyn = (n · ey  ) (n · ex  )2 + (n · ey  )2 ,
coordinates x, and the quantities c and n = (n1 , n2 , n3 )

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stand for the phase velocity (eigenvalue) and the direction ex  = (cos θ0 cos ϕ0 , cos θ0 sin θ0 , −sin θ0 ),
cosines of the phase-slowness vector, respectively. For ey  = (−sin ϕ0 , cos ϕ0 , 0),
given aij kl (x) and ni , there is no problem in obtaining
the phase velocity c by solving equation (1), which ez = (sin θ0 cos ϕ0 , sin θ0 sin ϕ0 , cos θ0 ).
normally has three eigenvalues {c(m) (aij kl , ni ), m = 1, 2, 3} The phase velocity c(m) and its derivative ∂c(m) /∂ϑ are
corresponding to the phase velocities of three wave modes calculated by Thomsen’s equation (1986, equation 7).
(qP, qS1, qS2) (Mensch and Rasolofosaon 1997). The phase Applying equations (6) and (7), we can transform a complex
velocities are functions of the elastic moduli aij kl (x) and gTI-medium described by a(x) = {a11 (x), a11 (x), a11 (x),
the angles (θ, ϕ) that define the direction cosine n = a11 (x), a11 (x), θ0 (x), ϕ0 (x)} into three group-velocity fields
(sin θ cos ϕ, sin θ sin ϕ, cos θ). Here, θ and ϕ are the U(m) (x, r̂(m) ) = U1(m) (x, r̂(m) ), U2(m) (x, r̂(m) ), U3(m) (x, r̂(m) ) ,
inclination and azimuth angles of the phase-slowness vector which govern the kinematic properties of the three wave modes
in the spherical coordinate system. For the group-velocity in such media. For any other anisotropic medium, one may
vector (which is generally in a different direction to the refer to Zhou and Greenhalgh’s paper (2004) that gives details
phase-slowness vector) of each wave mode, one can employ of the computation of the group velocities for most general
Crampin’s formula (1981) anisotropic media. We should mention that equations (2),

 (3) or (6) may be applied to calculate the wavefronts (travel
∂c(m) sin ϕ ∂c(m)
U1(m) = c(m) sin θ + cos θ cos ϕ − , time contours) in a homogeneous, anisotropic medium. To
∂θ sin θ ∂ϕ

 distinguish the results obtained with the ray tracing method
(m) ∂c(m) cos ϕ ∂c(m) described in the following text, and the wavefronts given by
U2 = c sin θ + cos θ
(m)
sin ϕ − , (2)
∂θ sin θ ∂ϕ equations (2), (3) or (6), we refer to the latter as analytic
solutions. Unfortunately, the analytic solutions are only
∂c(m)
U3(m) = c(m) cos θ − sin θ , available for a homogeneous anisotropic medium, and not for
∂θ heterogeneous media.
or Červeny’s equation (1972)
aij kl 4. Fermat’s principle
Ui(m) = (m) nl gk(m) gj(m) , (3)
c
and calculate the ray directions Fermat’s principle of stationary time for seismic wave
propagation in a general anisotropic medium is fundamental
(m)
r̂ = (sin θm cos ϕm , sin θm sin ϕm , cos θm ) (4) to our method. Bóna and Slawinski (2003) proved
for each wave mode. The quantities gk(m) in equation (3) are it mathematically via the Hamiltonian equations and the
the eigenvectors corresponding to equation (1) and the angles variational formulation. Here, we give a simple alternative
θm and ϕm in equation (4) are the spherical polar coordinate proof using the Červeny and Firbas (1984) ray equations.
angles defining the ray direction and calculated by According to the definitions of the phase-slowness vector
 (p = ∇τ ) and the group-velocity vector (U = dx/dτ ), one can
   (m) 2  (m) 2  (m) 2 
θm = cos−1 U3(m) U1 + U2 + U3 , calculate the travel time τ along a ray path R by the following
 (5) integration:
 −1
 (m)   (m) 2  (m) 2 
ϕm = cos U1 U1 + U2 . ds
τ (m) = p(m) dx = (m)
, (8)
For example, considering a general transversely isotropic R R U
medium (gTI-medium), which depends on five independent where ds = |dx| stands for a small segment of the ray path,
density-normalized elastic moduli (a11 , a13 , a33 , a55 , a66 ) in p(m) = n/cm and U (m) = |U(m) | represent the phase-slowness
the Voigt recipes (Helbig 1994) and two orientation angles vector and the magnitude of the group velocity, respectively.

56
 Anisotropic ray tracing

Equation (8) indicates that either the phase-slowness vector involve considering the direction-dependent group velocity
p(m) or the group velocity U (m) can be employed for the travel U (m) (x, r̂(m) ) and the manner by which we can efficiently find
time computation. Along the ray path, we have the following the minimum travel time over all possible paths linking the
equations (Červeny and Firbas 1984): two points xi and xj . In the next section, we will describe
a method for doing this, which is a direct extension of an
[c(m) ]2 = aij kl ni nl gk(m) gj(m) ,
irregular-network SPM for ray tracing in isotropic media.
dpi(m) (9)
1 ∂asj kl (m) (m)
= − nl ns g g .
dτ (m) 2[c(m) ]2 ∂xi k j 5. Ray tracing method
Note that ni are independent variables of the phase velocity.
As is well known, SPM is based on Huygens’ principle
We obtained the identity
(Musgrave 1970), which describes the following picture of
1 ∂c(m) dpi(m) wave propagation: every point on a wavefront is a new source
= − (m) (10)
c(m)
∂xi dτ of secondary waves. For the next wavefront the wave solution
by differentiating the first of equations (9). In equation is the summation of the contributions from all the ‘point
(10), we used the perpendicular relation gk(m) ∂gk(m) ∂xi = 0. sources’ on the previous wavefront. This is then combined
According to U(m) · p(m) = 1 and c(m) = n · U(m) , we have with Fermat’s principle embodied in equation (14)—the travel

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another identity: time of the first arrival at a point in an elastic medium is
the minimum of the travel times from all the neighbouring
1 ∂c(m) n ∂U(m) ∂p(m) points. According to these principles, a modified SPM for an
= (m) · = −U(m) · . (11)
c(m)∂xi c ∂xi ∂xi anisotropic medium may be formulated. It can be summarized
Combining equations (10) and (11) leads to the following by the following steps.
equation,
dp(m) 5.1. Discretizing a medium into a group-velocity-gridded
U(m) · ∇p(m) = , (12) model
dτ (m)
which is satisfied along a ray path. With equation (12) we can A 2D/3D elastic medium may be divided into a gridded model
show Fermat’s principle in an anisotropic medium as follows. with a certain cell size or element (dx, dy, dz) whose corner
Perturbing both sides of equation (8) and applying points give the primary nodes N0 = Nx Ny Nz for a 3D model
equation (12), we obtain or N0 = Nx Nz for a 2D model, where Nx , Ny and Nz are
B the total numbers of the primary nodes in the  x-, y- and 
δτ (m) = δ(p(m) · dx) z-directions. The secondary node densities Nxe , Nye , Nze ,
A
B
defined by the numbers of inserted additional nodes in the three
= δp(m) · dx − δx · dp(m) directions in each cell, are required for accurate ray tracing.
A The secondary nodes are distributed in terms of the node


B
dp(m) densities Nxe , Nye , Nze on the common boundary of the cells.
= δp · U − δx · (m) dτ (m)
(m) (m)
All of the nodes (primary and secondary) are described by the
A dτ
B order number i and the spatial coordinates {(xi, yi, zi ), i = 1,
dp(m)
= (∇p(m) · δx) · U(m) − δx · (m) dτ (m) 2, . . . , N}. These grid nodes are considered as candidate points
A dτ of ray paths through the medium and also include the location
B
(m) 
dp points of all the shots and geophones, which are two known
= U(m) · ∇p(m) − (m) · δx dτ (m) = 0, (13)
A dτ points of a ray path. The primary nodes are also samples of
where A and B stand for the two end points of the ray path R. the model parameter, for example, a gTI-medium has a set
This equation gives Fermat’s principle of seismic waves in an of model parameters, a(x) = {a11 (xi ), a13 (xi ),a33 (xi ),a55 (xi ),
anisotropic medium and implies that any ray path should be the a66 (xi ),θ0 (xi ),ϕ0 (xi ), i ∈ N0 }, which can be used to compute a
trajectory that makes the travel time integration (8) stationary set of the group velocity {U (m) (xi , r̂(m) ), i ∈ N0 } via equations
δτ (m) = 0. In other words, the travel time from a source to (2)–(5) or (6), (7). If the cell contains isotropic media, we
take the actual specified P-wave and S-wave velocities for
a receiver must be the minima over all the possible ray paths.
those media as the group velocities. Figure 1 illustrates the
Consequently, the first-arrival time at a point xj can be found
discretizing procedure for a 3D case. The cell size (dx, dy,
from the following expression:
  dz) and the secondary node densities Nxe , Nye , Nze provide
xj
(m) ds an irregular network for ray tracing, which is different from
τij = min  (m)  , ∀ xi ∈ j , (14)
xi U (m) x, r̂ij
the regular network SPM which uses only primary nodes
(uniform small cell size for achieving dense nodes in the ray
where j is the neighbourhood of xj and r̂(m) ij represents tracing network). Klimeš and Kvasnička (1994) described
the direction of the ray path. Obviously, if the group such a ‘regular approach’ for a 3D application. Obviously,
velocity is not a function of the direction r̂(m)
ij of a ray path, this irregular network allows us to tailor the cell size and the
equation (14) reduces to the isotropic case. Equation (14) secondary node density for better description of an anisotropic
presents the possibility of extending ray tracing in isotropic model and the ray path coverage in a cell with as few total
media to general anisotropic media. The extension should cells and nodes as possible.

57
B Zhou and S A Greenhalgh

anisotropic model Element (cell) Velocity model

a1 dy a4 U1( m ) (rˆ ) U 4( m ) (rˆ )

dx U 2( m ) (rˆ )
a2 U 3( m ) (rˆ )
a3
dz
a8 U 8( m ) (rˆ )
a5 a7 U 5( m ) (rˆ ) U 7( m ) (rˆ )

a(x) U ( m ) (x, rˆ )
a(x) --Elastic moduli --primary nodes
U ( m ) (x, rˆ ) --Group velocity --secondary nodes

Figure 1. Model conversion from a gridded anisotropic medium (elastic moduli) into a group-velocity-gridded model field. Each cell or
element has the corner points or primary grid nodes (solid circles) and the secondary nodes (grey circles) on the six planes of the cell. The
corner points are used as the model parameter samples and the candidate points of a ray path. The other points are only used as the
candidate points for tracing a ray path through the element.

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5.2. Initializing the travel time field coinciding with geophones and the incident node numbers in a
backward manner from a geophone to a source. The sequence
In tracing the ray paths of a common shot gather, zero travel
of the incident node numbers gives the coordinates of the
time is assigned to the source point and a large value (107) is
ray paths diverging from the source to the geophones. This
assigned to all other grid nodes. Then, starting with the source
procedure gives the travel times and corresponding ray paths
point, one calculates the travel times from the source to all
of a common shot gather. For the next shot, one goes back to
the neighbouring points, which become the computed frontal
step (2) and repeats the above procedures until all the sources
points of the source.
have been considered.

5.3. Calculating the minimum travel time field

6. Numerical experiments
To calculate the minimum travel times for all the grid nodes,
one may gradually expand the area of the computed nodes by In order to test the method described above, we wrote
continually adding the undetermined neighbouring nodes to computer programs for ray tracing in 2D and 3D anisotropic
the computed nodes. According to equation (14), the minium media and conducted several numerical experiments for
travel time from a computed node i to an undetermined node j homogenous and heterogeneous media. For ease
in a cell may be approached by of understanding and comparison with exact solutions,
  the primary experiments were carried out with some
(m) (m) 2|xi − xj |
tj ≈ min ti +     , (15) homogeneous, anisotropic models. Two shales are chosen
i∈Nj U (m) xi , r̂(m)
ij + U (m) xj , r̂(m)
ij from Thomsen’s paper (1986) and they are named Clay
where Nj is a subset of the computed frontal nodes in the Shale and Green River Shale. Their elastic tensors and the
neighbourhood  of the undetermined wavefronts at τ = 1 (s) computed by equations (6) and (7)
 node (m) 
j. The group
for dipping symmetry axes (θ0 = 45◦ , ϕ0 = 0) are given in
velocities U (m) xi , r̂(m)
ij and U (m)
x j , r̂ij are obtained by
a Lagrangian interpolation function, figure 2, from which one can see significant anisotropy of the
three waves in the two rocks. The three wave modes have
Ne Ne  
x − xek   quite different wavefront shapes or group velocity patterns.
U (m) (x, r̂) =  e  U (m) xek , r̂ , (16)
k=1 l=1
xl − xk e In particular, the two quasi-shear waves (qS1, qS2) split—
l=k propagating in different wavefronts. The qS1-wave has cusps
where xek and Ne are the coordinates and the number of the (triplications) in the direction of the symmetry axis. The wave
corner nodes of the cell, respectively, e.g. Ne = 4 for a 2D velocities of the three modes (for each rock) are constant in
case and Ne = 8 for a 3D application. In this expanding the plane perpendicular to the symmetry axes, but change with
computation, one should start with the node that has the inclination angle from this plane.
minimum travel time in the subset Nj so as to keep track of Figure 3 gives the 3D travel time contours of the three
the first arrival time for the undetermined nodes. Meanwhile, wave modes computed with the ray tracing method (white
the order number of the incident point i∗ giving the minimum lines) and the analytic method (black triangle string) in Clay
travel time to the point j is recorded for the coordinates of the Shale with vertical (figure 3(a), θ0 = 0◦ , ϕ0 = 0◦ ) and dipping
ray path. (figure 3(b), θ0 = 45◦ , ϕ0 = 0◦ ) symmetry axes. A shot
is located at the mid-point along the surface. In these
computations, we applied a 20×20×10 grid for the 3D volume
5.4. Picking up the travel time and coordinates of a ray path
of 10 km × 10 km × 5 km, and five secondary nodes in each
After finishing the minimum travel time computation for all cell direction Nxe = Nye = Nze = 5 . These diagrams show
the grid nodes, one may pick up the travel times at the points that the travel times of the different wave modes computed by

58
 Anisotropic ray tracing

a11 = 15.1, a13 = 1.6, a33 = 10.8, a44 = 3.1, a66 = 4.3 (km /s) 2
qP-wave qSV-wave qSH-wave

(km)
(km) (km) (km) (km) (km)

(km) (km)
(km)

a11 = 25.7, a13 = 15.2, a33 = 15.4, a44 = 4.2, a66 = 9.0 (km /s) 2
qP-wave qSV-wave qSH-wave

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(km) (km) (km)
(km) (km) (km)

(km) (km) (km)

Figure 2. 3D synthetic wavefronts at τ = 1s (or group velocities) for the three wave modes (qP, qS1, qS2) in Clay Shale and Green River
Shale.

(a )
qP-wave qS1-wave qS2-wave

(b )
qP-wave qS1-wave qS2-wave

Figure 3. First arrival travel time contours from 3D ray tracing for the three wave modes in Clay Shale with (a) vertical and (b) dipping
orientation (θ0 = 45◦ , ϕ0 = 0◦ ) of the symmetry axis. The solid lines are the results of the presented method and the posted triangles are
analytic solutions for comparison. The shot is located at the middle point on the surface.

the SPM are consistent with the analytic method (maximum
relative error <1%), and the travel time contours significantly
change with the orientation angle of the symmetry axis. The
results for the qS1-wave show that the SPM method fails to
calculate the cusps (triplications of travel time), because we
are unable to use three values of the group velocity in a ray
direction r̂(m)
ij in equation (15). This is a disadvantage of the
method. We also conducted the experiments with 2D models.
The results are almost the same as those depicted for the xz-
plane in figure 3.
As is well known, cell size and secondary node density
are important control parameters in SPM. The accuracy and
computational efficiency of the method depend on these
parameters (Moser 1991, Klimeš and Kvasnička 1994). In
order to investigate the accuracy and efficiency of the method,
we repeated the experiments shown in figure 1 with different
cell sizes (dx = dy = dz = 0.25 km, 0.3 km, 0.5 km, 1.0 km)

59
B Zhou and S A Greenhalgh

(a ) (b )

Figure 4. The maximum relative errors in the travel time for the numerical 3D modelling shown in figure 3 versus the secondary node
density and the cell size.

(a )
7 100

CPU time (minutes)

90.2
CPU time (minutes)

N xe = N ze = 5

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Grid: 200 × 100 5.88 80
6

4.85
60
5 4.53
4.21 40
3.9 25.45
4 3.75
20
0.31 4.21
3 0
3 4 5 6 7 9 100x50 200x100 300x150 400x200
Secondary node density (points) 2D grid (cells)

(b )
300 180
CPU time (minutes)

CPU time (minutes)

266.6 161.4
250 150
Grid: 20 × 20 × 10 N =N =N =4
e
x
e
y
e
z
200 120
150 90
100 59.02
100 60
58
50 14.9
31 30 14.9
6.3 3.52
0 0
3 4 5 6 7 9 10x10x10 20x20x10 30x30x15 40x40x20
Secondary node density (points) 3D grid (cells)
Figure 5. CPU time versus secondary node density and grid dimension for 2D and 3D modelling.


and different secondary node densities Nxe = Nye =
 efficiency of the computations.
Nze = 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 , recorded the computer times (CPU)
and calculated the relative errors (referred to the analytic
solutions) in the 2D and 3D ranges of the models. Figure 4
shows the maximum relative error versus secondary node
density (figure 4(a)) and cell size (figure 4(b)) for 3D
models. The 2D experiments gave similar results to figure 4.
In figure 4(a), we used a constant cell size (dx = dy =
dz = 0.5 km) for all the secondary node densities. The plot
indicates that the accuracy is generally improved by increasing
the number of secondary nodes, but the improvement tapers
off when the secondary node density exceeds 4 points for this
model. In figure 4(b), we employed
 a fixed secondary node
density Nxe = Nye = Nze = 4 for all cell sizes. The diagram
shows that when the cell size reaches a certain level, i.e.
0.5 km in this case, the computational error does not
significantly decrease with decreasing cell size. These
experiments imply that an appropriate choice of cell size
and secondary node density will benefit the accuracy and the
Figure 5 gives the CPU times on a Pentium 4, 3.2 GHZ
PC for the 2D (a) and 3D (b) experiments. From the
description of the method in the previous section, it is
clear that the CPU times should be unchanged, whether a
homogeneous or heterogeneous anisotropic model is being
considered; computation speed depends only on the total
numbers of cells and nodes, which are given by  the cell size

(dx, dy, dz) and the secondary node densities Nxe , Nye , Nze .
So, the CPU time shown in figure 5 may be considered as
a general guide to the cost of computer time for 2D and
3D applications. Figure 5(a) shows that in the 2D case, the
CPU time gradually increases with the secondary node density
when the cell size is fixed, and it shows a major jump with
cell number at around 80 000. Apparently, the method is
applicable for most 2D situations. Figure 5(b) gives the CPU
times for the 3D numerical experiments. These diagrams show
that the CPU time increases significantly with the secondary

60
 Anisotropic ray tracing

(a )
qP-wave qS1-wave qS2-wave

(b ) qP-wave qS1-wave qS2-wave

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Figure 6. 3D first arrival travel time contours of qP, qS1 and qS2 waves in a model involving a vertical contact between two anisotropic
rocks: the left side is Clay Shale and the right side is Green River Shale. (a) Both rocks have vertical symmetry axes, (b) Clay Shale has a
vertical axis of symmetry and Green River Shale has a dipping symmetry orientation (θ0 = 45◦ , ϕ0 = 0◦ ).

(a ) qP-wave qS1-wave qS2-wave

(b ) qP-wave qS2-wave
qS1-wave

Figure 7. First arrival travel time contours and ray paths computed by the presented method for a compound transversely isotropic model.
The shot is located at the origin point (0, 0). The anisotropic parameters of each layer are adapted from Thomsen’s paper (1986). (a) All the
shale layers have vertical symmetry axes, and (b) the first two shale layers have a dipping symmetry axis orientation of 45◦ .

node density and the 3D grid dimension, and suggest that a 3D
application may employ 4 or 5 points for the secondary node
density, and up to several tens of thousands of cells.
Figure 6 is an example of a 3D heterogeneous, anisotropic
model. It shows the travel time distributions (wavefronts) of
the three wave modes for a model involving a vertical contact
between two anisotropic media: the left side is Clay Shale
and the right side is Green River Shale. Their group velocities
are given in figure 2. A cell size of 0.5 km and a secondary
node density of 5 points were applied to these experiments.
Figure 6(a) gives the results for vertical symmetry axes of the
two rocks (VTI media) while figure 6(b) shows the change in
the travel time patterns when the symmetry axis of the Green
River Shale is rotated by 45◦ (gTI-medium).
Figure 7 is an example of the method for ray tracing in
a 2D heterogeneous, anisotropic model, which consists of a
water layer and three kinds of shale layer whose anisotropic
parameters were given by Thomsen (1986). Faria and Stoffa

61
B Zhou and S A Greenhalgh
Source Offset (m)
10 1000
Traveltime (s)
0.65
Figure 8. Comparison of the first-arrival travel times (dashed line)
produced by this method with the synthetic seismograms
(background) computed by Kebaili et al (1996), who applied a
frequency-domain integral method and simulated a deep VSP over a
sedimentary formation in North Alberta, Canada. The source is
located at 500 m depth.
(1994b) used this model to present their iterative mapping
algorithm for computing the travel time of the qP-wave in a
composite VTI model. The diagrams give the ray paths and
travel time contours for two separate cases in which the first
two shale layers have vertical (a) and dipping orientations (b)
of the symmetry axes. Comparing figure 7(a) with Faria and
Stoffa’s results, we find all the travel time features of the qP-
wave in the different layers are consistent. Unfortunately,
Faria and Stoffa’s did not provide details on the model
parametrization, e.g., cell size and whether a constant cell or an
inhomogeneous cell was used. Here, we used a 2 m cell size
and inhomogeneous cells in which the velocity is variable.
There may be slight differences in the results due to the
different model parametrizations. We should emphasize that
our presented method is valid for a more general anisotropic
medium than that considered by Faria and Stofa, namely VTI,
and produces results not only for the qP-wave (as done by
Faria and Stoffa) but also for the two quasi-shear waves.
Moreover, our method gives not only travel times but also
the corresponding ray paths. This is important for kinematic
inversion.
Figure 8 is the comparison of the results of our method
with the synthetic seismograms computed by Kebaili et al
(1996). They applied a frequency-domain integral method
and simulated a deep VSP (vertical seismic profiling) over a
sedimentary formation in North Alberta, Canada. The source
is located at a depth of 500 m and 50 geophones were set up on
the surface 10 m to 1000 m away from the borehole. The thin-
layered sedimentary formation was described by an equivalent
VTI medium. This diagram shows that the computed travel
times (dashed line) for the qP- and qSV-waves from our method
match the full seismograms very well (shown as background).
7. Conclusions
We have presented a simple 2D/3D ray tracing method
for a general heterogeneous, anisotropic medium whose
wave properties at each point are defined by up to 21
spatially dependent elastic moduli. We have also given an
62
alternative derivation of Fermat’s principle for anisotropic
media. This method is actually a direct extension of the
irregular network ‘shortest path method’ in an isotropic
medium to an anisotropic medium. It involves two steps:
(1) an analytic computation of the group velocity is applied to
the mapping or transformation from the anisotropic medium
(defined by up to 21-elastic-moduli-gridded model) into the
group-velocity-gridded models for three seismic wave modes
(qP, qS1, qS2), (2) based on the group-velocity-gridded models,
the SPM of an irregular network is applied to compute the first
arrival travel times and corresponding ray paths for the three
wave modes.
The numerical experiments show that grid cell size and
secondary node density are important for the computational
accuracy and efficiency of the method. We have shown that
this method is applicable for most 2D applications, which
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may involve a relatively large secondary node density (5∼9
points) and up to fifty thousand cells with reasonable cost in
computer time. For a 3D application, the cost of computer
time significantly increases with secondary node density and
total number of cells. However, the method is still applicable
to models involving several tens of thousands of cells with a
secondary node density of 4 or 5 points. This 3D limitation
will change with the development of computer technology.
The 2D and 3D computational examples also show that the
orientation of the symmetry axis of a transversely isotropic
medium may significantly affect the kinematic properties of
all the three modes, and should be taken into account in seismic
interpretation.
Acknowledgment
This research was supported by a grant from the Australian
Research Council.
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