Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1308.1661

Site effects in an alpine valley with strong velocity gradient: interest and limitations of the 'classical' BEM

Nicolas Delepine·Jean-François Semblat
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Seismic waves may be strongly amplified in deep alluvial basins due to the velocity contrast (or velocity gradient) between the various layers as well as the basin edge effects. In this work, the seismic ground motion in a deep alpine valley (Grenoble basin, French Alps) is investigated through various 'classical' Boundary Element models. This deep valley has a peculiar geometry ("Y"-shaped) and involves a strong velocity gradient between surface geological structures. In the framework of a numerical benchmark [21-23], a representative cross section of the valley has been proposed to investigate 2D site effects through various numerical methods. The 'classical' Boundary Element Method is considered herein to model the strong velocity gradient with a 2D piecewise homogeneous medium. For a large incidence angle, the transfer functions estimated from plane SH waves are close to the one computed with shallow SH point sources. The fundamental frequency is estimated at 0.33 Hz (SH wave) and the agreement with previous experimental results (spectral ratios) is good. Comparisons between 1D and 2D amplification are then performed: the values of the fundamental frequency and the corresponding amplitude are larger in 2D. Converting frequency domain results into the time domain, we underline surface waves generated at the valley edges and the directivity effect for the amplified wave-field. In the time domain for plane SV-wave, we also computed the ground motion for a strong seismic event (M=6): time duration and peak ground velocity are found to be 3 times larger than for the input signal. Such 2D models involving basin effects are then capable to recover the high amplification level measured in the field. Nevertheless, to deal with complex 3D basins as also proposed in the "ESG" benchmark [21-23], the capabilities of the classical Boundary Element Method are limited. As shown recently [43,47,52], such improvements as the fast multipole formulation (FM-BEM) may be a promising alternative for future 3D simulations.

Explore related subjects

physics.geo-ph

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Nicolas Delepine, Jean-François Semblat. 2013-08-07. Site effects in an alpine valley with strong velocity gradient: interest and limitations of the 'classical' BEM. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2012.02.001

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Parameter-Efficient Adaptation of Pre-Trained Vision Foundation Models for Active and Passive Seismic Data Denoising

The demand for high-resolution subsurface imaging and continuous Earth monitoring has driven rapid growth in active and passive seismic data from dense geophone deployments, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) arrays, and large-scale 2D and 3D surveys. This expansion makes complex noise suppression increasingly challenging, especially when signal fidelity must be preserved. Conventional supervised deep learning methods are often task-specific, require large paired datasets, and can suffer from domain shift under new acquisition conditions. Foundation models offer a promising alternative, but pre-training seismic foundation models from scratch requires massive domain-specific data and substantial computation. We propose an efficient framework that repurposes general-purpose Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) for geophysical tasks through Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning. The architecture uses a pre-trained VFM, a DINOv3 encoder, adapted with Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) to enable effective feature adaptation with few additional parameters. To improve robustness under unseen field conditions without ground truth, we introduce a kurtosis-guided unsupervised test-time adaptation module that updates only LoRA parameters during inference. This module self-calibrates the model to site-specific noise by identifying information-rich regions via kurtosis and performing self-training without labeled data. Experiments on public exploration seismic images and DAS vertical seismic profiling data from the Utah FORGE site show that the framework matches or outperforms domain-specific models. Tests on unseen cross-site data from a land survey in China and the Groß Schönebeck geothermal site in Germany further demonstrate strong generalization and effective signal-noise separation. These results highlight the potential of adapting pre-trained VFMs to data-intensive problems in exploration seismology.

physics.geo-ph↗
arXiv2026

Shallow-to-deep velocity model building via diffusion models-Part I: Method and Proof of concept

Seismic velocity model building (VMB) is fundamental for understanding subsurface structures. Traditional methods demand high-quality starting models and, also, remain limited in resolution in coverage and computationally intensive. Recent generative diffusion model-based approaches capture statistical priors to support traditional inversion methods, but these approaches do not account for the top to bottom progression of information (layer stripping) involved in surface recorded data, where deep velocity information depends on the shallow. To address this issue, we propose a depth-progressive diffusion framework that constructs velocity models incrementally from shallow to deep by propagating prior information. Our method trains on paired shallow-deep velocity patches with variable overlap and explicit depth encoding, integrating multiple geophysical constraints including well logs and seismic images (representing structural information). During inference, we synthesize overlapping depth slices using a progressive algorithm and merge them with Gaussian-weighted blending to eliminate boundary artifacts. This approach leverages both learned geological distributions and observed shallow priors while providing uncertainty quantification. Extensive numerical experiments on in-distribution tests and an out-of-distribution test demonstrate excellent VMB accuracy with a strong correlation between predicted uncertainty and actual errors. As a proof of concept, this part I employs idealized structural constraints derived from vertical reflectivity to validate the methodological framework. The companion paper (Part II) extends the approach to realistic structural constraints relying on migrated images with field data applications.

physics.geo-ph↗
arXiv2026

Shallow-to-deep velocity model building via diffusion models-Part II: Realistic scenarios

Full-waveform inversion (FWI) requires accurate initial velocity models to avoid cycle-skipping, but constructing such models remains challenging in practice. Building on the depth-progressive diffusion framework introduced in Part~I, which relied on idealized reflectivity constraints, this work adapts the methodology to realistic exploration scenarios. We replace perfect structural information with migration-derived attributes extracted from seismic images, and introduce smooth background velocity models from tomography as additional conditioning inputs. The framework jointly leverages background/migration velocity, migrated structural information, and sparse well measurements to synthesize high-resolution velocity models through depth-progressive generation. Validation on synthetic examples demonstrates superior accuracy compared to conventional interpolation and alternative deep learning methods, with generated models successfully initializing FWI and mitigating cycle-skipping even in complex geological structures. Field data confirms practical applicability: despite training on synthetic data, the method generalizes effectively to field conditions, producing velocity models with synthetic data response that nearly match observed seismic data. As a result, this framework establishes a practical pathway to deploy generative diffusion models for velocity model building under realistic constraints.

physics.geo-ph↗