Wave propagation in a fractional viscoelastic Andrade medium: diffusive approximation and numerical modeling

This study focuses on the numerical modeling of wave propagation in fractionally-dissipative media. These viscoelastic models are such that the attenuation is frequency dependent and follows a power law with non-integer exponent. As a prototypical example, the Andrade model is chosen for its simplicity and its satisfactory fits of experimental flow laws in rocks and metals. The corresponding constitutive equation features a fractional derivative in time, a non-local term that can be expressed as a convolution product which direct implementation bears substantial memory cost. To circumvent this limitation, a diffusive representation approach is deployed, replacing the convolution product by an integral of a function satisfying a local time-domain ordinary differential equation. An associated quadrature formula yields a local-in-time system of partial differential equations, which is then proven to be well-posed. The properties of the resulting model are also compared to those of the original Andrade model. The quadrature scheme associated with the diffusive approximation, and constructed either from a classical polynomial approach or from a constrained optimization method, is investigated to finally highlight the benefits of using the latter approach. Wave propagation simulations in homogeneous domains are performed within a split formulation framework that yields an optimal stability condition and which features a joint fourth-order time-marching scheme coupled with an exact integration step. A set of numerical experiments is presented to assess the efficiency of the diffusive approximation method for such wave propagation problems.