Two parabolic equations for propagation in layered poro-elastic media.

Parabolic equation methods for fluid and elastic media are extended to layered poro-elastic media, including some shallow-water sediments. A previous parabolic equation solution for one model of range-independent poro-elastic media [Collins et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 98, 1645-1656 (1995)] does not produce accurate solutions for environments with multiple poro-elastic layers. First, a dependent-variable formulation for parabolic equations used with elastic media is generalized to layered poro-elastic media. An improvement in accuracy is obtained using a second dependent-variable formulation that conserves dependent variables across interfaces between horizontally stratified layers. Furthermore, this formulation expresses conditions at interfaces using no depth derivatives higher than first order. This feature should aid in treating range dependence because convenient matching across interfaces is possible with discretized derivatives of first order in contrast to second order.