Chapter
Mar 23, 2023

Surface Wave Site Characterization with MATLAB and Geopsy

Publication: Geo-Congress 2023

ABSTRACT

An assortment of algorithms for the processing of surface wave data are presented and utilized to analyze several case studies. Algorithms developed in MATLAB are described for extracting dispersion curves from waveforms for all typical field test scenarios, including SASW, MASW, ReMi, and 2D passive arrays. Geopsy contains a publicly available module that inverts dispersion curves for both shear wave velocity and layer thickness based upon a global search algorithm that provides valuable information on the uncertainty of the profile parameters. A suite of models from Geopsy can be post processed with MATLAB routines for display of inversion results, including important statistical parameters. The algorithms have been used to process various forms of original data from several case studies. Inversions with lowest variability are produced by soft soil sites with gentle variation, whereas sites with sharp contrasts such as soil over rock at shallow depths can produce inversion results with much larger variability. Inversion for that “one true model” can be elusive, even in the case of synthetic data sets where the true model is known; it is possible to come close, but with inversion come both uncertainty and blurriness.

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Geo-Congress 2023
Pages: 223 - 233

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Published online: Mar 23, 2023

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Dennis R. Hiltunen, M.ASCE [email protected]
1Professor, Dept. of Civil and Coastal Engineering, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL. Email: [email protected]

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