AccScience Publishing / JSE / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/JSE026210090
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Research on the application of crosswell seismic full-waveform inversion method in high-steep structures

Feilong Yang1,2,3 Xuke Chen1 Tao Huang4* Yifan Lu1 Shengjie Feng1 Ziqi Wei1
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1 Department of Applied Geophysics, College of the Geoscience and Engineering, Xi’an Shiyou University, Xi’an, Shaanxi , China
2 Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Petroleum Accumulation Geology, Department of Applied Geophysics, Faculty of Geoscience and Engineering, Xi’an Shiyou University, Xi’an, Shaanxi , China
3 Key Laboratory of Exploration and Development of Complex and Difficult-to-Produce Oil & Gas Reservoirs, Department of Applied Geophysics, Faculty of Geoscience and Engineering, Xi’an Shiyou University, Ministry of Education, Xi’an, Shaanxi , China
4 Fifth Prospecting Team of Shandong Provincial Bureau of Coal Geology, Jinan, Shandong , China
Received: 22 May 2026 | Revised: 28 July 2026 | Accepted: 31 July 2026 | Published online: 14 September 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Full-waveform inversion is the core technology for achieving high-precision velocity modeling at present. However, in areas with steep structures, complex wavefield propagation characteristics and strong lateral velocity variations often lead to poor convergence of the inversion process and reduced model accuracy. Crosswell seismic data, owing to their unique acquisition geometry and high signal-to-noise ratio, provide a reliable data basis for high-steep structural imaging. Therefore, this study proposes a high-precision full-waveform inversion method based on crosswell seismic data. Firstly, crosswell seismic forward modeling technology was employed to simulate the theoretical model of high-steep structures and generate synthetic data, construct the residual error between the simulated and measured data, and establish an L2-norm objective function based on this residual error. On this basis, the gradient of the objective function was efficiently computed by the adjoint-state method and combined with the limited-memory Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno optimization algorithm to iteratively update the velocity model based on the gradient, thus effectively reducing the risk of convergence to local extrema and improving the convergence and stability of the inversion process. Numerical simulation and field data processing results show that this method effectively delineates the boundary details of steep structures and improves the resolution of the velocity model, providing strong technical support for fine exploration and efficient development of complex structural oil and gas reservoirs.

Keywords
Full-waveform inversion
Crosswell seismic
High-steep structure
Velocity model
Limited-memory Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno optimization algorithm
Funding
This work was supported by the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42304135), the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi (No. 2026JC-QYCX-095) and the Project under the Special Scientific Research Program of Shandong Provincial Bureau of Coal Geology (2023, No. 29).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing