Travel times and ray paths for continous media

Abstract

Travel times and amplitude observations are of prime importance in seismic interpretation of both source and structure. A new method for computing travel times and ray paths for media whose velocity law of wave propagation and boundaries are specified analitically, is presented here. Toe method is illustrated by severa! examples in two dimensions, and an extension to the three dimensional case is developed. This method facilitates further computations related to the construction of synthetic seismograms, and provides better tools for data inversion and model interpretation. Numerically, this method is an improvement over existing methods for solving certain types of differential equations, where a ray path is considered as a curve in space. Computationally, the method is straightforward, and yields accurate results with relatively little effort. The usual predictor-corrector control is replac~d by a pair of easy to apply criteria.