Modelagem direta bidimensional do método magnetotelúrico com o método dos elementos finitos de arestas

Abstract

We have modelled 2D magnetotelluric using the edge finite element method by formulating the problem in terms of primary and secondary fields. In order to explore more complex models and to reduce the computational effort we have used unstructured meshes. We constrain the mesh to include, around each MT station four nodes in a square-shaped arrangement, aligned to the Cartesian axis 𝑥 and 𝑧. From the tangential fields evaluated on the edges of these squares we approximate the partial derivatives with finite differences. We validate our code comparing its responses with the semi-analytical solution of a fault. We evaluate the efficiency of the method compared to nodal based finite element method. Our results suggest that the edge finite element method was less efficient to modelling the 2D MT in terms of primary and secondary fields than the nodal based finite element method, mainly due the need of more memory storage and time of processing for the studied models.