Stewart Jackson’s Honours project, which concluded in mid-2018, involved the development and testing of new code to numerically model 3D elastic wave propagation in mine environments. The project was undertaken in collaboration with the Institute of Mine Seismology to facilitate full-waveform inversion of seismic arrivals from mining-induced seismic events. Stewart’s code implemented a 4th order implicit finite difference approximation of the elastic wave equation. The code was tested using a detailed 3D physical property model of the Renison Tin Mine in western Tasmania, and successfully simulated the recorded seismograms from local seismic events. A novel and significant aspect of Stewart’s new code is the ability to model wavefields resulting from distributed non-point sources that more accurately represent movements on small faults than solutions provided by pre-existing software.

Stewart Jackson’s Honours project involved the development and testing of new code to numerically model 3D elastic wave propagation in mine environments. The project was undertaken in collaboration with the Institute of Mine Seismology to facilitate full-waveform inversion of seismic arrivals from mining-induced seismic events. Stewart’s code implemented a 4th order implicit finite difference approximation of the elastic wave equation. The code was tested using a detailed 3D physical property model of the Renison Tin Mine in western Tasmania, and successfully simulated the recorded seismograms from local seismic events. A novel and significant aspect of Stewart’s new code is the ability to model wavefields resulting from distributed non-point sources that more accurately represent movements on small faults than solutions provided by pre-existing software.