MSAT—A new toolkit for the analysis of elastic and seismic anisotropy

The design and content of MSAT, a new Matlab toolkit for the study and analysis of seismic and elastic anisotropy, is described. Along with a brief introduction to the basic theory of anisotropic elasticity and a guide to the functions provided by the toolkit, three example applications are discussed. First, the toolkit is used to analyse the effect of pressure on the elasticity of the monoclinic upper mantle mineral diopside. Second, the degree to which a model of elasticity in the lowermost mantle can be approximated by transverse isotropy is examined. Finally backazimuthal variation in the effective shear wave splitting caused by two anisotropic layers where the lower layer is dipping is calculated. MSAT can be freely reused for any purpose and the implementation of these and other examples are distributed with the source code.

► A new Matlab toolkit for elastic and seismic anisotropy is described.
► Allows the creation, manipulation and analysis of elastic anisotropy.
► Permits analysis of single- and polycrystal elasticity data.
► Calculates effective shear wave splitting of two dipping layers.