Application of Seismic Methods For Geotechnical Site Characterization
Application of Seismic Methods For Geotechnical Site Characterization
Application of Seismic Methods For Geotechnical Site Characterization
P.M. Soupios
Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Department of Natural Resources & Environment,
Laboratory of Geophysics & Seismology, Hania, Greece
Figure 2: Topography map of the study area showing the location of the wells, presented with black circles. A total num-
ber of 12 boreholes were used for the experiment.
propagating shear waves (SV). The radial com- associated with particle motion perpendicular to
ponent senses the propagating compression the direction of propagation. Using this method
waves (P) and the tangential component senses we could distinguish the component which “re-
the horizontally propagating shear waves (SH). ceived” the S-wave motion by plotting compo-
The hammer input and the receiver outputs are nent pairs, as is shown in Figure 4, since the
recorded by a Geometrics seismograph (Strata- orientation of the horizontal components of the
View-24bit, 24 channels). At the same time, the recording geophones was unknown.
one of the geophones was also used to acquire
2.1 Preliminary data interpretation
DHS data set, when compression and shear
waves are generated in the surface by the use of When one receiver borehole is used, the travel
a sledgehammer with a triggering system. The time from source to the receiver is measured.
source and receivers were moved to the next This is referred to as direct travel time meas-
measurement depth and the process is continued urements. In the case that two receiver bore-
until all desired measurements were taken. holes are used, the travel time between the re-
We have used the SAC freeware interactive ceivers is measured, usually referred to as inter-
software (Seismic Analysis Code, developed by val travel time measurements. Note that interval
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, University of travel times are normally more accurate than
California, 11/6/2000, Version 00.59.2) to pick direct travel times, since this method reduces
arrivals times. Picking of P arrivals is much eas- timing errors caused by differences in seismic
ier than S-arrival identification since it is always triggering, variations in source impulse charac-
the first wave usually sharply arriving at the teristics and errors arising from variations in
geophone. borehole size or mud-cake thickness near the
For the S-waves, the picking of the onset of transmitters. The wave velocities for compres-
shear-wave motion in the presence of source sion and shear waves at a specific depth are eas-
generated noise (later cycles of P-motion or tube ily determined by dividing the travel distances
waves) can sometimes be challenging. Two by the measured travel time. The travel dis-
methods of identification were applied: a) The tances were measured in the surface at the beg-
conventional method of overlapping waveforms ging of the survey, assuming that the boreholes
(from the “positive” and “negative” source po- were vertical.
larity records) for each of the two geophones
2.2 Tomographic interpretation of the Data
(usually vertical and a horizontal) is often ade-
quate to obtain a crossover onset of shear-wave We used an iterative, 3-D tomographic inver-
energy, as shown in Figure 3 and, b) alterna- sion routine to determine the velocity structure
tively we used the change of polarization direc- betweens the wells and the ground (Soupios
tion of the wave field using particle motion dia- et al., 2001). The forward routine calculates the
grams. In practice for the P-wave arrival a linear first arriving travel time using the revisited ray
particle motion along the direction of propaga- bending method, supplemented by an approxi-
tion is observed, whereas the S-wave arrival is mation of the first Fresnel zone at each point of
4 International Workshop in “Geoenvironment and
Geotechnics”, September 2005, Milos island, Greece
Figure 3: Detection of S-waves arrival using the conventional method of overlapping waveforms as recorded from hori-
zontals and vertical component. It is obviously that the vertical component, receive the S-wave energy better than the
horizontal components.
Figure 4: Picking of P and S-waves arrival applying the particle motion diagrams.
the ray, hence using physical and not only the updates the model. The program iterates until
mathematical rays (Fig. 5). Therefore, the algo- the root-mean-square travel time residual cannot
rithm computes the raypath, solves for the be further minimized.
slowness using either an LSQR routine (Paige We used a grid spacing of 2 meters in depth,
and Saunders, 1982) or an SVD algorithm and similar to the source and receiver spacing during
International Workshop in “Geoenvironment and 5
Geotechnics”, September 2005, Milos island, Greece
Figure 9: A cross section of the area from the combined interpretation of the borehole logs and geophysical measure-
ments is obtained. Three stromatographic units are found, a) a formation with poorly–graded gravels, gravel-sand mix-
tures and little or no fines (Vp=1705m/s, Vs=254m/s), b) a weathered and fractured basement consist of gneiss
(Vp=2737m/s, Vs=681m/s) and c) the rigid gneiss basement (Vp=3379m/s, Vs=1184m/s).
8 International Workshop in “Geoenvironment and
Geotechnics”, September 2005, Milos island, Greece