An Oversampling Technique for Multiscale Finite Volume Method to Simulate Frequency-domain Electromagnetic Responses

To reduce the computational cost of the simulation of electromagnetic responses in geophysical settings that involve highly heterogeneous media, we develop a multiscale finite volume method with oversampling for the quasi-static Maxwells equations in the frequency domain. We assume a coarse mesh nested into a fine mesh, which accurately discretizes the setting. For each coarse cell, we independently solve a local version of the original Maxwell’s system subject to linear boundary conditions on an extended domain, which includes the coarse cell and a neighborhood of fine cells around it. The local Maxwell’s system is solved using the fine mesh contained in the extended domain and the mimetic finite volume method. Next, these local solutions (basis functions) together with a weak continuity condition are used to construct a coarse-mesh version of the global problem that is much cheaper to solve. The basis functions can be used to obtain the fine-mesh details from the solution to the coarse-mesh problem. Our approach leads to a significant reduction in the size of the final system of equations and the computational time, while accurately approximating the behavior of the fine-mesh solutions. We demonstrate the performance of our method using a synthetic 3D example of a mineral deposit.