A no-cost improved velocity-stress staggered-grid finite-difference scheme for modelling seismic wave propagation

We investigate the problem of finite-difference approximations of the velocity-stress formulation of the equation of motion and constitutive law on the staggered grid (SG) and collocated grid (CG). For approximating the first spatial and temporal derivatives, we use three approaches: Taylor expansion (TE), dispersion-relation preserving (DRP), and combined TE-DRP. The TE and DRP approaches represent two fundamental extremes. We derive useful formulae for DRP and TE-DRP approximations. We compare accuracy of the numerical wavenumbers and numerical frequencies of the basic TE, DRP and TE-DRP approximations. Based on the developed approximations, we construct and numerically investigate 14 basic TE, DRP and TE-DRP finite-difference schemes on SG and CG. We find that (1) the TE second-order in time, TE fourth-order in space, 2-point in time, 4-point in space SG scheme (that is the standard (2,4) VS SG scheme, say TE-2-4-2-4-SG) is the best scheme (of the 14 investigated) for large fractions of the maximum possible time step, or, in other words, in a homogeneous medium; (2) the TE second-order in time, combined TE-DRP second-order in space, 2-point in time, 4-point in space SG scheme (say TE-DRP-2-2-2-4-SG) is the best scheme for small fractions of the maximum possible time step, or, in other words, in models with large velocity contrasts if uniform spatial grid spacing and time step are used. The practical conclusion is that in computer codes based on standard TE-2-4-2-4-SG, it is enough to redefine the values of the approximation coefficients by those of TE-DRP-2-2-2-4-SG for increasing accuracy of modelling in models with large velocity contrast between rock and sediments.