FDTD Seismic Simulation of Moving Tracked Vehicle

• Main Authors: Ketcham, Stephen A., Moran, Mark L., Greenfield, Roy J.
• Other Authors: COLD REGIONS RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING LAB HANOVER NH
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Surface Transportation and Equipment; Seismic Detection and Detectors; *SIMULATION; *MOTION; *SEISMIC WAVES; *TRACKED VEHICLES; VELOCITY; ALGORITHMS; ARMY RESEARCH; DETECTORS; MODELS; BATTLEFIELDS; WEAPON SYSTEMS; PARALLEL PROCESSING; FINITE DIFFERENCE THEORY; PARTICLES; WAVE PROPAGATION; SEISMOLOGY; GEOLOGIC MODELS; FDTD(FINITE-DIFFERENCE TIME DOMAIN); Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA392215; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA392215

This paper describes the utility of a large finite-difference time domain (FDTD) simulation of seismic wave propagation from a spatially and time varying source that generically represents a moving tracked vehicle. The focus is the computational approach and requirements for the long-duration simulation, the geologic model, the moving vehicle force algorithm, the resulting particle velocity wave fields, and example applications of the data. The 8th order FDTD simulation consisted of parallel computations based upon a domain decomposition strategy. The computations were performed using a Sun workstation cluster at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (ERDC-CRREL). Our use of such a cluster was necessary because of the spatial extent of the model and the duration of the simulated event; the model dimension is roughly 210 m by 286 m by 80 m (deep) pithy 1 .6-m node spacing, and the event duration is 24.6 s with time steps of 180 (microsecond). The event duration reflects the time required for the vehicle to traverse the model surface at an average speed close to 45 km/h. Three-component particle-velocity wave-field histories over this duration were stored by the simulation for later processing. Models of this extent and duration are on the order of the expected range of coverage for battlefield systems such as Raptor or the Future Combat System sensor system. As a consequence, resulting simulation data can be used for system development in a manner similar to field data. The original document contains color images.