Dispersion-bounded numerical integration of the elastodynamic equations with cost-effective staggered schemes

Known procedures for designing numerical schemes for the integration of elastodynamic equations with explicit control over numerical dispersion are reviewed. In the literature, the analysis of such schemes has concentrated on the discrete space differentiators, and has neglected the role played by time discretization in the overall accuracy. In this paper we define a computational cost for a given dispersion error bound which fully includes the effect of temporal differencing. For some representative schemes based on leap-frog time marching, we provide an optimal operating point (time sampling rate and number of grid points per shortest wavelength) which minimizes the computational cost for a given dispersion error threshold. Based on this notion of cost, we introduce new optimal operators for staggered grids. Additionally, we introduce the notion of composite differentiators to design still more cost-effective schemes. The cost of the proposed schemes is shown to be less than that of known finite difference (FD) operators and compares favorably with pseudo-spectral (PS) algorithms. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the new operators.