Numerical Solution of 3-D Magnetotelluric Using Vector Finite Element Method

Magnetotelluric (MT) is a passive electromagnetic (EM) method which measure natural variations of electric and magnetic vector fields at the Earth surface to map subsurface electrical conductivity/resistivity structure. In this study, we obtained numerical solution of three-dimensional (3-D) MT using vector finite element method by solving second order Maxwell differential equation describing diffusion of plane wave through the conductive earth. Rather than the nodes of the element, the edges of the element is used as a vector basis to overcome the occurrence of nonphysical solutions that usually faced by scalar (node based) finite element method. Electric vector fields formulation was used and the resulting system of equation was solved using direct solution method to obtain the electric vector field distribution throughout the earth resistivity model structure. The resulting MT response functions was verified with 1-D layered Earth and 3-D2 COMMEMI outcropping structure. Good agreement is achieved for both structure models.