Ramatoulie Bah
Shayla R. Brooks
Dana Brown
Linwood Creekmore
Torreon N. Creekmore
Vincent Augustus Davis
Peter Eley
Danielle Graves
Paula Harrell
Golar Newby
Elizabeth Rascoe
Carl W. Seward
Eunice Smith
Rodney Stewart
Nelson Veale
Jordan Williams

Nelson Veale
email: shawnb17@hotmail.com

Mentor: Dr. Guoqing Tang, Dr. Dominis P. Clemence, Dr. Caesar R. Jackson
Internship: North Carolina A&T University, Greensboro, North Carolina
Title: Forward Finite Difference Modeling of Seismic Wave Propagation

There has been a concentrated effort in the use of numerical modeling to create synthetic seismograms. Geophysicists, mathematicians, and computer specialists have made a collective effort to create accurate models to refine the method used to analyze geophysical phenomena. A simple and accurate approach to this challenge is finite difference representation. This method uses numerous discrete solutions to the second order acoustic or elastic wave equations in homogenous or heterogeneous regions to simulate seismic wave propagation through acoustic or elastic media.
In this project we investigated these finite difference methods and presented an analysis of a model based on actual subsurface structure findings obtained from geophysical surveys at North Carolina A&T State University Environmental Study Site using seismic refraction technique. The model used consisted of two distinct layers with different velocities. Both velocity and density in each layer were assumed to be constant. The study of this numerical modeling problem focused on:
• Determining
(a) appropriate boundary conditions
(b) a reasonable source function that resembles the actual source wavelet generated through swinging a sledgehammer
(c) Critical offsets beyond which we expected the occurrence of head waves
• Discretizing the partial differential equation representing our model using three-point central difference approximations to convert the PDE into an explicit iterative difference equation
• Developing a Maple computer program to solve the PDE numerically and plot the numerical solution
• Interpreting the obtained synthetic seismic data