Title: Insight into the modeling of seismic waves for detection of underground cavities,
Abstract: Motivated by the need to detect an underground cavity within the procedure of
an On-Site-Inspection (OSI), of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Organization, the aim of this paper is to present results on the comparison of
our numerical simulations with an analytic solution. The accurate numerical
modeling can facilitate the development of proper analysis techniques to detect
the remnants of an underground nuclear test. The larger goal is to help set a
rigorous scientific base of OSI and to contribute to bringing the Treaty into
force. For our 3D numerical simulations, we use the discontinuous Galerkin
Spectral Element Code SPEED jointly developed at MOX (The Laboratory for
Modeling and Scientific Computing, Department of Mathematics) and at DICA
(Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) of the Politecnico di
Milano.