A step towards easy 3D Restoration: Relaxing the meshing constraints.

Pauline Durand-Riard and Guillaume Caumon and Mary Ford. ( 2008 )
in: Proc. 28th Gocad Meeting, Nancy

Abstract

Balanced restoration consists in removing the e ects of tectonic deformations in order to retrieve the deposition state of the current structural model. Restoration then helps validating a geodynamic scenario, reducing structural uncertainties by testing the structural model consistency, and, given a correct rock behavior law, evaluate retro-deformations. Most existing volume restoration methods are based on an elastic nite element mechanical model. Displacements boundary conditions are set on the top horizon and the faults borders, then an elastic model solves the restoration problem using a nite element method, applied on the tetrahedral mesh. However, the conforming tetrahedral mesh generation of the structural model is the main practical bottleneck for this 3D restoration method. Indeed, the mesh has to be conformal to both faults and horizons, including unconformities and onlap surfaces, which may drastically increase the number of elements and decrease the mesh quality. Instead, we propose to embed horizons in the tetrahedral model, and to transfer the associated boundary condition onto the neighboring nodes of the mesh. This procedure can be applied using explicit surfaces, possibly denser than the tetrahedral mesh, or implicit surfaces. A by-product of this new boundary condition is the speci cation of a target geometry for the restoration, which can be used when a model of paleotopography is available. The proposed method is demonstrated on a typical example.

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    BibTeX Reference

    @inproceedings{124_durandriard,
     abstract = { Balanced restoration consists in removing the e
    ects of tectonic deformations in order to retrieve
    the deposition state of the current structural model. Restoration then helps validating a geodynamic
    scenario, reducing structural uncertainties by testing the structural model consistency, and, given a
    correct rock behavior law, evaluate retro-deformations. Most existing volume restoration methods
    are based on an elastic 
    nite element mechanical model. Displacements boundary conditions are set
    on the top horizon and the faults borders, then an elastic model solves the restoration problem using
    a 
    nite element method, applied on the tetrahedral mesh. However, the conforming tetrahedral
    mesh generation of the structural model is the main practical bottleneck for this 3D restoration
    method. Indeed, the mesh has to be conformal to both faults and horizons, including unconformities
    and onlap surfaces, which may drastically increase the number of elements and decrease the mesh
    quality. Instead, we propose to embed horizons in the tetrahedral model, and to transfer the
    associated boundary condition onto the neighboring nodes of the mesh. This procedure can be
    applied using explicit surfaces, possibly denser than the tetrahedral mesh, or implicit surfaces.
    A by-product of this new boundary condition is the speci
    cation of a target geometry for the
    restoration, which can be used when a model of paleotopography is available. The proposed method
    is demonstrated on a typical example. },
     author = { Durand-Riard, Pauline AND Caumon, Guillaume AND Ford, Mary },
     booktitle = { Proc. 28th Gocad Meeting, Nancy },
     title = { A step towards easy 3D Restoration: Relaxing the meshing constraints. },
     year = { 2008 }
    }