A Novel Hybrid Finite Element – Finite Difference Approach for 3D Magnetotelluric Modeling

What is it about?

This work is about the implementation of both finite elements and finite differences on a single mesh using rectangular prisms and distorted hexahedral elements to benefit from both numerical methods. The finite elements can represent the complex topographic features while the finite-difference approach is known to be easily implemented and it is faster and more memory efficient when numerically compared to the finite elements. This work aims to use the advantages of both numerical methods at the same time.

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Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash

Photo by Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash

Why is it important?

While using hexahedral elements, some parts of the mesh are distorted to add topographic features. This technique makes it possible to use finite elements for the distorted elements and finite differences for the rest of the non-distorted region to achieve both speed-up and memory efficiency during the modeling. The offered implementation technique also allows to alteration of existing hexahedral finite-elements code into a hybrid code easily with the shown example.

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