Nonlinear least-squares estimation of shear elasticity and shear viscosity in viscoelastic media

Rapid simulations of three-dimensional (3D) shear wave propagation in viscoelastic media with a Kelvin-Voigt model are enabled by Green’s functions accelerated with graphics processing unit parallelization and high-performance computing resources. Cross-correlation analysis of the wave motion yields an estimate of shear elasticity, where the errors in the estimated values increase with rising shear viscosity. To reduce errors in the shear elasticity estimates, a nonlinear least-squares routine that accounts for the effects of propagation, attenuation, and dispersion is applied to 3D simulated shear wave data in viscoelastic media. The nonlinear least-squares approach also yields an estimate of the shear viscosity when applied to simulated particle velocity waveforms. Post-processing, cross-correlation analysis, and the nonlinear least-squares routine are evaluated on a desktop computer using MATLAB. Estimation of viscoelastic parameters is performed at the focal depth for several combinations of shear elasticity and shear viscosity. The errors in the estimated shear elasticities obtained from the nonlinear least-squares routine and cross-correlation are determined as a function of the input shear elasticity and shear viscosity values. The estimates provided by the nonlinear least-squares routine for shear elasticity and shear viscosity are shown to approach the simulation input values for each combination of viscoelastic parameters.