Introducing faults in Rigid Element Method for geological structure modelling.

Gautier Laurent and Laurent Ailleres. ( 2014 )
in: Proc. 34th Gocad Meeting, Nancy

Abstract

Rigid Element Method (Reed) is a Computer Graphics deformation algorithm that has recently been developed for rapid and interactive 3D structural modelling. It is based on rigid elements, whose position and rotation is iteratively optimised to minimise displacement variations in the model. The algorithm is robust since rigid elements can not degenerate during the optimisation process even with extreme deformation. As the method is based on computer graphics algorithms, it lacks certain geological peculiarities and in particular faults. In this paper, we present a way to introduce faults in this framework by defining an appropriate cost function that penalizes the variation of distance between the elements and the faults. This formulation fits into the existing computation process and takes advantage of Reed’s robustness. The cost function can also be used to introduce soft boundary conditions allowing improved interactivity to set the deformation parameters. With these improvements, Reed is applicable for modelling and editing of geological structures in complex structural contexts. This approach could be used in a range of applications allowing modelling of uncertainties associated with geological structures, structural forward modelling, restoration and geophysical data inversion.

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BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Laurent1GM2014,
 abstract = { Rigid Element Method (Reed) is a Computer Graphics deformation algorithm that has recently been developed for rapid and interactive 3D structural modelling. It is based on rigid elements, whose position and rotation is iteratively optimised to minimise displacement variations in the model. The algorithm is robust since rigid elements can not degenerate during the optimisation process even with extreme deformation. As the method is based on computer graphics algorithms, it lacks certain geological peculiarities and in particular faults. In this paper, we present a way to introduce faults in this framework by defining an appropriate cost function that penalizes the variation of distance between the elements and the faults. This formulation fits into the existing computation process and takes advantage of Reed’s robustness. The cost function can also be used to introduce soft boundary conditions allowing improved interactivity to set the deformation parameters.
With these improvements, Reed is applicable for modelling and editing of geological structures in complex structural contexts. This approach could be used in a range of applications allowing modelling of uncertainties associated with geological structures, structural forward modelling, restoration and geophysical data inversion. },
 author = { Laurent, Gautier AND Ailleres, Laurent },
 booktitle = { Proc. 34th Gocad Meeting, Nancy },
 title = { Introducing faults in Rigid Element Method for geological structure modelling. },
 year = { 2014 }
}