arXiv subjects

Dave A. May

Publications and source records attributed to Dave A. May.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Quantifying the influence of fault geometry via mesh morphing with applications to earthquake dynamic rupture and thermal models of subduction

Subsurface geometries are often poorly constrained, yet they exert first-order control on key geophysical processes, including subduction zone thermal structure and earthquake rupture dynamics. Quantifying model sensitivity to geometric variability remains challenging due to the manual effort of mesh generation and the computational cost of exploring high-dimensional parameter spaces in high-fidelity simulations. We present a mesh morphing approach that deforms a reference mesh into geometrically varying configurations while preserving mesh connectivity. This enables the automated generation of large ensembles of geometrically variable meshes with minimal user input. Importantly, the preserved connectivity allows for the application of data-driven, non-intrusive reduced-order models (ROMs) to perform robust sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification. We demonstrate mesh morphing in two geophysical applications: (i) 3D dynamic rupture simulations with fault dip angles varying across a 40° range, and (ii) 2D thermal models of subduction zones incorporating realistic slab interface curvature and depth uncertainties informed by the Slab2 geometry dataset. In both cases, morphed meshes retain high quality and lead to accurate simulation results that closely match those obtained using exactly generated meshes. For the dynamic rupture case, we further construct ROMs that efficiently predict surface displacement and velocity time series as functions of fault geometry, achieving speedups of up to $10^9 \times$ relative to full simulations. Our results show that mesh morphing can be a powerful and generalizable tool for incorporating geometric uncertainty into physics-based modeling. The method supports efficient ensemble modeling for rigorous sensitivity studies applicable across a range of problems in computational geophysics.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2024

Sensitivity Analysis of the Thermal Structure Within Subduction Zones Using Reduced-Order Modeling

Megathrust earthquakes are the largest on Earth, capable of causing strong ground shaking and generating tsunamis. Physical models used to understand megathrust earthquake hazard are limited by existing uncertainties about material properties and governing processes in subduction zones. A key quantity in megathrust hazard assessment is the distance between the updip and downdip rupture limits. The thermal structure of a subduction zone exerts a first-order control on the extent of rupture. We simulate temperature for profiles of the Cascadia, Nankai and Hikurangi subduction zones using a 2D coupled kinematic-dynamic thermal model. We then build reduced-order models (ROMs) for temperature using the interpolated Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (iPOD). The resulting ROMs are data-driven, model agnostic, and computationally cheap to evaluate. Using the ROMs, we can efficiently investigate the sensitivity of temperature to input parameters, physical processes, and modeling choices. We find that temperature, and by extension the potential rupture extent, is most sensitive to variability in parameters that describe shear heating on the slab interface, followed by parameters controlling the thermal structure of the incoming lithosphere and coupling between the slab and the mantle. We quantify the effect of using steady-state vs. time-dependent models, and of uncertainty in the choice of isotherm representing the downdip rupture limit. We show that variability in input parameters translates to significant differences in estimated moment magnitude. Our analysis highlights the strong effect of variability in the apparent coefficient of friction, with previously published ranges resulting in pronounced variability in estimated rupture limit depths.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2024

Reduced-order modeling for complex 3D seismic wave propagation

Elastodynamic Green's functions are an essential ingredient in seismology as they form the connection between direct observations of seismic waves and the earthquake source. They are also fundamental to various seismological techniques including physics-based ground motion prediction and kinematic or dynamic source inversions. In regions with established 3D models of the Earth's elastic structure, 3D Green's functions can be computed using numerical simulations of seismic wave propagation. However, such simulations are computationally expensive which poses challenges for real-time ground motion prediction. Here, we use a reduced-order model (ROM) approach that enables the rapid evaluation of approximate Green's functions. The ROM technique developed approximates three-component surface velocity wavefields obtained from numerical simulations of seismic wave propagation. We apply our ROM approach to a 50 km x 40 km area in the greater Los Angeles area accounting for topography, site effects, 3D subsurface velocity structure, and viscoelastic attenuation. The ROM constructed for this region enables rapid computation (0.001 CPU hours) of complete, high-resolution, 0.5 Hz surface velocity wavefields that are accurate for a shortest wavelength of 1.0 km. Using leave-one-out cross validation, we measure the accuracy of our Green's functions in both the time-domain and frequency-domain. Averaged across all sources and receivers, the error in the rapid seismograms is less than 0.01 cm/s. We demonstrate that the ROM can accurately and rapidly reproduce simulated seismograms for generalized moment tensor sources in our region, as well as kinematic sources by using a finite fault model of the 1987 Mw 5.9 Whittier Narrows earthquake as an example. We envision that our rapid, approximate Green's functions will be useful for constructing rapid ground motion synthetics with high spatial resolution.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2024

Coupling 3D geodynamics and dynamic earthquake rupture: fault geometry, rheology and stresses across timescales

Tectonic deformation crucially shapes the Earth's surface, with strain localization resulting in the formation of shear zones and faults that accommodate significant tectonic displacement. Earthquake dynamic rupture models, which provide valuable insights into earthquake mechanics and seismic ground motions, rely on initial conditions such as pre-stress states and fault geometry. However, these are often inadequately constrained due to observational limitations. To address these challenges, we develop a new method that loosely couples 3D geodynamic models to 3D dynamic rupture simulations, providing a mechanically consistent framework for earthquake analysis. Our approach does not prescribe fault geometry but derives it from the underlying lithospheric rheology and tectonic velocities using the medial axis transform. We perform three long-term geodynamics models of a strike-slip geodynamic system, each involving different continental crust rheology. We link these with nine dynamic rupture models, in which we investigate the role of varying fracture energy and plastic strain energy dissipation in the dynamic rupture behavior. These simulations suggest that for our fault, long-term rheology, and geodynamic system, a plausible critical linear slip weakening distance falls within Dc in [0.6,1.5]. Our results indicate that the long-term 3D stress field favors slip on fault segments better aligned with the regional plate motion and that minor variations in the long-term 3D stress field can strongly affect rupture dynamics, providing a physical mechanism for arresting earthquake propagation. Our geodynamically informed earthquake models highlight the need for detailed 3D fault modeling across time scales for a comprehensive understanding of earthquake mechanics.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2024

Generalisation of the Navier-slip boundary condition to arbitrary directions: Application to 3D oblique geodynamic simulations

Although boundary conditions are mandatory to solve partial differential equations, they also represent a transfer of information between the domain being modelled and its surroundings. In the case of isolated or closed systems, these can be formulated using free- or no-slip conditions. However, for open systems, the information transferred through the boundaries is essential to the dynamics of the system and can have a first order impact on its evolution. This work addresses regional geodynamic modelling simulating the evolution of an Earth's piece over millions of years by solving non-linear Stokes flow. In this open system, we introduce a new approach to impose oblique boundary conditions generalising the Navier-slip boundary conditions to arbitrary directions in 3D. The method requires defining both slip and stress constraints. The stress constraint is imposed utilising a coordinate transformation to redefine the stress tensor along the boundaries according to the arbitrary direction chosen while for the slip constraint we utilise Nitsche's method in the context of the finite element method, resulting in a symmetrised and penalised weak form. We validate our approach through a series of numerical experiments of increasing complexity, starting with 2D and 3D linear models. Then, we apply those boundary conditions to a 3D non-linear geodynamic model of oblique extension that we compare with a standard model utilising Dirichlet boundary conditions. Our results show that using Dirichlet boundary conditions strongly influences the evolution of the system and generates artefacts near and along the boundaries. In comparison, the model using the generalised Navier-slip boundary conditions behaves closely to a model with an unbounded domain, providing a physically interpretable solution near and along the boundaries.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2023

Instantaneous physics-based ground motion maps using reduced-order modeling

Physics-based simulations of earthquake ground motion are useful to complement recorded ground motions. However, the computational expense of performing numerical simulations hinders their applicability to tasks that require real-time solutions or ensembles of solutions for different earthquake sources. To enable rapid physics-based solutions, we present a reduced-order modeling (ROM) approach based on interpolated proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) to predict peak ground velocities (PGVs). As a demonstrator, we consider PGVs from regional 3D wave propagation simulations at the location of the 2008 Mw 5.4 Chino Hills earthquake using double-couple sources with varying depth and focal mechanisms. These simulations resolve frequencies $\leq$ 1.0 Hz and include topography, viscoelastic attenuation, and S-wave speeds $\geq$ 500 m/s. We evaluate the accuracy of the interpolated POD ROM as a function of the approximation method. Comparing the radial basis function (RBF), multilayer perceptron neural network, random forest, and $k$-nearest neighbor, we find that the RBF interpolation gives the lowest error ($\approx$ 0.1 cm/s) when tested against an independent dataset. We also find that evaluating the ROM is $10^7-10^8$ times faster than the wave propagation simulations. We use the ROM to generate PGV maps for one million different focal mechanisms, in which we identify potentially damaging ground motions and quantify correlations between focal mechanism, depth, and accuracy of the predicted PGV. Our results demonstrate that the ROM can rapidly and accurately approximate the PGV from wave propagation simulations with variable source properties, topography, and complex subsurface structure.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2022

Basal hydrofractures near sticky patches

Basal crevasses are macroscopic structural discontinuities at the base of ice sheets and glaciers. Motivated by observations and the mechanics of elastic fracture, we hypothesise that in the presence of basal water pressure, spatial variations in basal stress can promote and localise basal crevassing. We quantify this process in the theoretical context of linear elastic fracture mechanics. We develop a model evaluating the effect of shear stress variation on the growth of basal crevasses. Our results indicate that sticky patches promote the initiation of basal crevasses, increase their length of propagation into the ice and, under some conditions, give them curved trajectories that incline upstream. A detailed exploration of the parameter space is conducted to gain a better understanding of the conditions under which sticky-patch-induced basal crevassing likely occurs beneath ice sheets and glaciers.

physics.geo-ph↗

arXiv2017

Symmetric Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin Discretisations and Block Preconditioning for Heterogeneous Stokes Flow

Provable stable arbitrary order symmetric interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (SIP) discretisations of variable viscosity, incompressible Stokes flow utilising $Q^2_k$--$Q_{k-1}$ elements and hierarchical Legendre basis polynomials are developed and investigated.For solving the resulting linear system, a block preconditioned iterative method is proposed. The nested viscous problem is solved by a $hp$-multilevel preconditioned Krylov subspace method. For the $p$-coarsening, a twolevel method utilising element-block Jacobi preconditioned iterations as a smoother is employed. Piecewise bilinear ($Q^2_1$) and piecewise constant ($Q^2_0$) $p$-coarse spaces are considered. Finally, Galerkin $h$-coarsening is proposed and investigated for the two $p$-coarse spaces considered. Through a number of numerical experiments, we demonstrate that utilising the $Q^2_1$ coarse space results in the most robust $hp$-multigrid method for variable viscosity Stokes flow. Using this $Q^2_1$ coarse space we observe that the convergence of the overall Stokes solver appears to be robust with respect to the jump in the viscosity and only mildly depending on the polynomial order $k$. It is demonstrated and supported by theoretical results that the convergence of the SIP discretisations and the iterative methods rely on a sharp choice of the penalty parameter based on local values of the viscosity.

math.NA↗

arXiv2016

Extreme-scale Multigrid Components within PETSc

Elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) frequently arise in continuum descriptions of physical processes relevant to science and engineering. Multilevel preconditioners represent a family of scalable techniques for solving discrete PDEs of this type and thus are the method of choice for high-resolution simulations. The scalability and time-to-solution of massively parallel multilevel preconditioners can be adversely effected by using a coarse-level solver with sub-optimal algorithmic complexity. To maintain scalability, agglomeration techniques applied to the coarse level have been shown to be necessary. In this work, we present a new software component introduced within the Portable Extensible Toolkit for Scientific computation (PETSc) which permits agglomeration. We provide an overview of the design and implementation of this functionality, together with several use cases highlighting the benefits of agglomeration. Lastly, we demonstrate via numerical experiments employing geometric multigrid with structured meshes, the flexibility and performance gains possible using our MPI-rank agglomeration implementation.

cs.MS↗

arXiv2011

Optimal, scalable forward models for computing gravity anomalies

We describe three approaches for computing a gravity signal from a density anomaly. The first approach consists of the classical "summation" technique, whilst the remaining two methods solve the Poisson problem for the gravitational potential using either a Finite Element (FE) discretization employing a multilevel preconditioner, or a Green's function evaluated with the Fast Multipole Method (FMM). The methods utilizing the PDE formulation described here differ from previously published approaches used in gravity modeling in that they are optimal, implying that both the memory and computational time required scale linearly with respect to the number of unknowns in the potential field. Additionally, all of the implementations presented here are developed such that the computations can be performed in a massively parallel, distributed memory computing environment. Through numerical experiments, we compare the methods on the basis of their discretization error, CPU time and parallel scalability. We demonstrate the parallel scalability of all these techniques by running forward models with up to $10^8$ voxels on 1000's of cores.

cs.CE↗