• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.11 no.1 s.53
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• pp.45-57
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• 2007

The mean shear wave velocity to the depth of 30 m (Vs30) derived from the western Vs is the current site classification criterion for determining the design seismic ground motion taking into account the site amplification potential. In order to evaluate the Vs30 at a site, a shear wave velocity (Vs) Profile extending to at least 30 m in depth must be acquired from in-situ seismic test. In many cases, however, the resultant depth of the Vs profile may not extend to 30 m, owing to the unfavorable field condition and the limitation of adopted testing techniques. In this study, the Vs30 and the mean shear wave velocity to a depth shallower, than 30 m (VsDs) were computed from the Vs profiles more than 30 m in depth obtained by performing various seismic tests at total 72 sites in Korea, and a correlation between Vs30 and VsDs was drawn based on the computed mean Vs data. In addition, a method for extrapolating the Vs profile from shallow depth to 30 m was developed by building a shape curve based on the average data of all Vs profiles. For evaluating the Vs30 from the shallow Vs profiles, both the methods using VsDs and shape curve result in less bias than the simplest method of extending the lowermost Vs equally to 30 m in depth, and are usefully applicable particularly in the cases of the Vs profiles extending to at least 10 m in depth.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.15-23
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• 2020

Ground motion models predicting intensity measures on surface use a time-averaged shear wave velocity, V_S30, as a key variable simulating site effect. The V_S30 can be directly estimated from V_S profiles if the profile depth (z) is greater than or equal to 30 m. However, some sites have V_S profiles with z < 30 m. In this case V_S30 can be predicted using extension models. This study proposes new coefficient sets for existing prediction equations using 297 Korea V_S profiles. We have collected V_S profiles from KMA and Geoinfo database. Fitting six existing methods to data, we suggest new coefficients for each method and evaluate their performance. It turns out that if z ≥ 15 m, the standard deviation (σ) of residual in log₁₀ is 0.061, which indicates that the estimated V_S30 is nearly accurate. If z < 15 m, the σ keeps increasing up to 0.1 for z = 5 m, so we caution the use of models at very low z. Nonetheless, we recommend investigating up to 30 m depth for V_S30 calculation if possible.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.13-23
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• 2008

In a nonlinear site response analysis which is performed in time domain, small strain damping is modeled as viscous damping through use of various forms of Rayleigh damping formulations. Small strain damping of soil is known to be independent of the loading frequency, but the viscous damping is greatly influenced by the loading frequency. The type of Rayleigh damping formulation has a pronounced influence on the dependence. This paper performs a series of nonlinear analyses to evaluate the degree of influence of the viscous damping formulation on Korean soil profiles. Analyses highlight the strong influence of the viscous damping formulation for soil profiles exceeding 30 m in thickness, commonly used in simplified Rayleigh damping formulation overestimating energy dissipation at high frequencies due to artificially introduced damping. When using the full Rayleigh damping formulation and carefully selecting the optimum modes, the artificial damping is greatly reduced. Results are further compared to equivalent linear analyses. The equivalent linear analyses can overestimate the peak ground acceleration even for shallow profiles less than 20 m in thickness.