# Rules of meshes in Specfem3D#

For built-in mesh generator, we can modify DATA/meshfem3D_files/Mesh_Par_file to define regions, meshes and materials.

## Define coordinates#

First we define limits of X, Y and Z directory.

LATITUDE_MIN                    = -20000.0
LATITUDE_MAX                    = 20000.0
LONGITUDE_MIN                   = 0.0
LONGITUDE_MAX                   = 120000.0
DEPTH_BLOCK_KM                  = 120.0
UTM_PROJECTION_ZONE             = 11
SUPPRESS_UTM_PROJECTION         = .true.
• LATITUDE represents Y directory.

• LONGITUDE represents X directory.

• DEPTH_BLOCK_KM defines maximum depth of the SEM domain in km.

Note

When SUPPRESS_UTM_PROJECTION is set to .false., the UTM_PROJECTION_ZONE is activated. The map of UTM zone can be referred as following. In this case, the LATITUDE and LONGITUDE are true latitude and longitude in degree.

## Set elements and materials#

### Number of elements#

# number of elements at the surface along edges of the mesh at the surface
# (must be 8 * multiple of NPROC below if mesh is not regular and contains mesh doublings)
# (must be multiple of NPROC below if mesh is regular)
NEX_XI                          = 24
NEX_ETA                         = 8

NPROC_XI                        = 2
NPROC_ETA                       = 2
• NEX_XI: Number of elements along X directory.

• NEX_ETA: Number of elements along Y directory.

• NPROC_XI and NPROC_ETA represent number of MPI processors along xi and eta, respectively. The NPROC in the Par_file should be NPROC_XI * NPROC_ETA.

Note

If USE_REGULAR_MESH is set to .true., number of elements must be multiple of NPROC. Otherwise, number of elements must be multiple of 8.

### Interface and elements along depth directory#

Set number of layers in first effective line. For each interface, we set parameters of interface file as

# SUPPRESS_UTM_PROJECTION  NXI  NETA LONG_MIN   LAT_MIN    SPACING_XI SPACING_ETA
.true.                     2    2    0.0        -20000.0   120000.0   40000.0
interf_1.dat
• The interface denotes the top of layer.

• Number of interf_1.dat must be NXI*NETA.

Then set up number of elements for each layer NZ.

### Materials of elements#

Define properties of materials as

# #material_id  #rho  #vp  #vs  #Q_Kappa  #Q_mu  #anisotropy_flag  #domain_id
1  2920  6500  3850  9999. 9999.  0  2
2  3423  8060  4530  9999. 9999.  0  2

Then assign materials to elements

NREGIONS                        = 2
# define the different regions of the model as :
#NEX_XI_BEGIN  #NEX_XI_END  #NEX_ETA_BEGIN  #NEX_ETA_END  #NZ_BEGIN #NZ_END  #material_id
1            24              1             8            18           25          1
1            24              1             8            1            17          2

## Avoid numerical dispersion#

The size of meshes is closely correlated to stability of numerical solution in forward modelling. There are two key points to avoid numerical dispersion.

### 1. Wavelength of seismograms#

The size of the elements must be smaller than the minimum possible wavelength in the region.

$\begin{split}L &< {\lambda}_{min} \\ &< \frac{v_{min}}{f}\end{split}$

In the setting above, we assume the $$v_{min}=6500\ m/s$$, where the $$v_{min}$$ is the Vp of the first layer. The wavelength is defined by the frequency of source time function. In the SEM-FK mode, the frequency $$f=2.0\ Hz$$ is defined in FKMODEL with f0. So the maximum size of element should be less than $$3.25\ km$$.

If the size of each element bas been determined as 5 km. the maximum frequency should be less than $$\frac{v_{min}}{L}=1.3\ Hz$$.

#### Gaussian Factor and cutoff frequency#

A Gaussian low pass filter can be expressed as in frequency domain

\begin{align}\begin{aligned}G(\omega) = e^{-\frac{{\omega}^2}{4{\alpha}^2}}\\\omega = 2{\pi}f\end{aligned}\end{align}

where $$f$$ is the physical frequency, $$\alpha$$ is the Gaussian Factor. As the Monteiller et al. [2021] suggestion, the so called cut-off frequency can be defined as that corresponding to that the energy of the source spectrum drops to values lower than 1 per cent of the maximum.Therefore, the normalized cutoff frequency is

$f_{cut} = \frac{\alpha}{\pi}\sqrt{-\ln(0.01)}$

the correspondence between Gaussian Factor and cutoff frequency is

### 2. Sampling rate#

As a introduction to choosing the time step in user manual, the condition of time step DT in Par_file is

$\Delta t<C \mathrm{min}_{\Omega}(\frac{h}{v})$

where $$C$$ is the so-called Courant number and $$\Omega$$ denotes the model volume. The distance $$h=\frac{L}{N_{GLL}}$$ depends on the mesh element size and the number of GLL points (defaults to 5). The Courant numbers empirically chosen $$C\approx0.3$$.

Note

If you used the mesher xmeshfem3D to generate your mesh, you should set the value suggested in OUTPUT_FILES/output_mesher.txt file, which is created after the mesher completed.

***
*** Maximum suggested time step for simulation =    0.04837248
***