AbstractSeismic exploration of deep oil/gas reservoirs involves the propagation of seismic waves in high-pressure media. Traditional elastic wave equations are not suitable for describing such media. The theory of acoustoelasticity establishes the dynamic equation of wave propagating in prestressed media through constitutive relation using third-order elastic constants. Many studies have been carried out on numerical simulations for acoustoelastic waves, but are mainly limited to 2D cases. A standard staggered-grid (SSG) finite-difference (FD) approach and the perfectly matched layer (PML) absorbing boundary are combined to solve 3D first-order velocity-stress equations of acoustoelasticity to simulate wave propagating in 3D prestressed solid medium. Our numerical results are partially validated by plane-wave analytical solution through the comparison of calculated and theoretical P-/S-wave velocities as a function of confining prestress. We perform numerical simulations of acoustoelastic waves under confining, uniaxial and pure-shear prestressed conditions. The results show the stress-induced velocity anisotropy in acoustoelastic media, which is closely related to the direction of prestresses. Comparisons to seismic simulations based on the theory of elasticity illustrate the limitation of conventional elastic simulations for prestressed media. Numerical simulations prove the significant effect of prestressed conditions on seismic responses.