Wave propagation across fluid-solid interfaces with LBM-LSM coupling schemes

Seismic wave propagation in fluid-solid coupled media is currently a popular topic. However, traditional wave equation-based simulation methods have to consider complex boundary conditions at the fluid-solid interface. To address this challenge, we propose a novel numerical scheme that integrates the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and lattice spring model (LSM). In this scheme, LBM simulates viscoacoustic wave propagation in the fluid area and LSM simulates elastic wave propagation in the solid area. We also introduce three different LBM-LSM coupling strategies, a standard bounce back scheme, a specular reflection scheme, and a hybrid scheme, to describe wave propagation across fluid-solid boundaries. To demonstrate the accuracy of these LBM-LSM coupling schemes, we simulate wave propagation in a two-layer model containing a fluid-solid interface. We place excitation sources in the fluid layer and the solid layer respectively, to observe the wave phenomena when seismic waves propagate to interface from different sides. The simulated results by LBM-LSM are compared with the reference wavefields obtained by the finite difference method (FDM) and the analytical solution (ANA). Our LBM-LSM coupling scheme was verified effective, as the relative errors between the LBM-LSM solutions and reference solutions were within an acceptable range, sometimes around 1.00%. The coupled LBM-LSM scheme is further used to model seismic wavefields across a more realistic rugged seabed, which reveals the potential applications of the coupled LBM-LSM scheme in marine seismic imaging techniques, such as reverse-time migration and full-waveform inversion. The method also has potential applications in simulating wave propagation in complex two- and multi-phase media.