• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.15.2-22
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• 1995

Evaluating stiffness of near-surface materials has been one of the critically important tasks in many civil engineering works. It is the main goal of geotechnical characterization. The so-called deflection-response method evaluates the stiffness by measuring stress-strain behavior of the materials caused by static or dynamic load. This method, however, evaluates the overall stiffness and the stiffness variation with depth cannot be obtained. Furthermore, evaluation of a large-area geotechnical site by this method can be time-consuming, expensive, and damaging to many surface points of the site. Wave-propagation method, on the other hand, measures seismic velocities at different depths and stiffness profile (stiffness change with depth) can be obtained from the measured velocity data. The stiffness profile is often expressed by shear-wave (S-wave) velocity change with depth because S-wave velocity is proportional to the shear modulus. that is a direct indicator of stiffiiess. The crosshole and downhole method measures the seismic velocity by placing sources and receivers (geophones) at different depths in a borehole. Requirement of borehole installation makes this method also time-consuming, expensive, and damaging to the sites. Spectral-Analysis-of-Surface-Waves (SASW) method places both source and receivers at the surface, and records horizontally-propagating surface waves. Based upon the theory of surfacewave dispersion, the seismic velocities at different depths are calculated by analyzing the recorded surface-wave data. This method can be nondestructive to the sites. However, because only two receivers are used, the method requires multiple measurements with different field setups and, therefore, the method often becomes time-consuming and labor-intensive. Furthermore. the inclusion of noise wavefields cannot be handled properly, and this may cause the results by this method inaccurate. When multi-channel recording method is employed during the measurement of surface-waves, there are several benefits. First, usually single measurement is enough because multiple number (twelve or more) of receivers are used. Second, noise inclusion can be detected by coherency checking on the multi-channel data and handled properly so that it does not decrease the accuracy of the result. Third, various kinds of multi-channel processing techniques can be applied to f1lter unwanted noise wavefields and also to analyze the surface-wavefields more accurately and efficiently. In this way, the accuracy of the result by the method can be significantly improved. Fourth, the entire system of source, receivers, and recording-processing device can be tied into one unit, and the unit can be pulled by a small vehicle, making the survey speed very fast. In all these senses, multi-channel recording of surface waves is best suited for a routine method for geotechnical characterization in most of civil engineering works.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.33-43
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• 2008

In this study, for the purpose of evaluating the shear wave velocity in core zone, cross-hole test, down-hole test, MASW (Multi-channel Analysis of Surface Wave), and seismic reflection survey were carried out on the crest of the existing 'Y' dam. The results of field tests were compared one another. Furthermore, the field test results were compared with the result by the Sawada's empirical recommendation method. The purpose of this study is to compare the results of four kinds of field tests for evaluation of shear wave velocity in core zone of existing dam, to verify applicability of the empirical method which was recommended by Sawada and Takahashi, and to recommend a reasonable method for evaluation of shear wave velocity which is needed to evaluate tile maximum shear modulus of core zone. From the results of four kinds of field tests such as cross-hole test, down-hole test, MASW, and seismic reflection survey, it was found that the shear wave velocity distributions were similar within 18 m in depth and the results obtained by MASW and seismic reflection survey were almost the same by 30 m in depth. For evaluation of shear wave velocity in core zone of the existing dam, in consideration that it is not easy to bore the hole ill the core zone of existing dam, surface surveys such as MASW and seismic reflection method are recommended as realistic methods. On condition that it is impossible to conduct the field test and it is preliminary investigation, it is recommended that Sawada's low bound empirical equation be used.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.434-478
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• 2006

Stress waves have been used for geophysical and geotechnical applications for more than 50 years. The early-stage applications were simply based on travel-time measurements of stress waves and limited to site characterization. Currently stress-wave techniques are expanded to monitoring processes for grouting of damaged geotechnical structures, compaction of embankment, and deformational analyses for static geotechnical problems. Seismic techniques used to be good enough for rough estimators of engineering properties. Nowadays, the sophisticated modeling theory of stress-wave propagation substantially improved reliability and accuracy of the seismic techniques. In this paper, difficulties involved in currently available seismic techniques are discussed and analyzed. Herein some recently-developed non-intrusive seismic techniques, which make optimal use of stress waves for further improvement of reliability and accuracy, are also presented.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.81-88
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• 2000

The elastic wave equation is solved using the finite-difference method in 3D space to simulate the seismic wave propagation. It is based on the velocity-stress formulation of the equation of motion on a staggered grid. The nonreflecting boundary conditions are used to attenuate the wave field close to the numerical boundary. To satisfy the stress-free conditions at the free-surface boundary, a new formulation combining the zero-stress formalism with the vacuum one is applied. The effective media parameters are employed to satisfy the traction continuity condition across the media interface. With use of the moment-tensor components, the wide range of source mechanism parameters can be specified. The numerical experiments are carried out in order to test the applicability and accuracy of this scheme and to understand the fundamental features of the wave propagation under the generalized elastic media structure. Computational results show that the scheme is sufficiently accurate for modeling wave propagation in 3D elastic media and generates all the possible phases appropriately in under the given heterogeneous velocity structure. Also the characteristics of the ground motion in an sedimentary basin such as the amplification, trapping, and focusing of the elastic wave energy are well represented. These results demonstrate the use of this simulation method will be helpful for modeling the ground motion of seismological and engineering purpose like earthquake hazard assessment, seismic design, city planning, and etc..

• 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.165-180
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• 2005

Impact seismic wave test is a method for nondestructive testing of concrete structure using of stress wave which is propagated and reflected from internal flaws within concrete structure and external surface, In this study, we performed non-destructive testing using impact seismic wave test for safety diagnosis of civil engineering structures. For this, I've compared and analized the result in the way of reflective method mostly using on one-dimension such as tunnel lining, and penetration method using the way of cross hole and tomography.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.868-873
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• 2004

Recently, The surface-wave method has widely been used for the site investigation due to the economic advantage and the improved reliability. The typical surface-wave methods currently available are SASW method, MASW method and CSW method. The CSW method has a potential of high-quality measurement, but its inherent problems limited its use to the special cases such as the compaction-quality control. The CSW method uses the steady-state harmonic vibration for the seismic source as in the steady-state Rayleigh-wave method, which is superior to the impact source used for other methods. This study proposed a new procedure to solve the inherent problems of the CSW method and to improve the reliability of the CSW measurements. To verify the validity of the proposed in this study, the SASW results were compared with the CSW results for the numerical simulation of the CSW testing. Also, the feasibility of the proposed method was verified using the field measurements at a geotechnical site.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.135-141
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• 2009

For more reliable estimation of soil-structure interaction and seismic source and attenuation properties, site amplification function should be considered. This study use the Nakamura's method (1989) for estimating site amplification though various methods for the same purpose have been proposed. This method was originally applied to the surface waves of background noise and therefore there are some limitation for applications to general wave energy. However, recently this method has been extended and applied to the S wave energy successfully. This study applied the method to the coda wave energy which is equivalent to the backscattered S wave energy. We used more than 60 observed ground motions from 5 earthquakes which occurred recently, with magnitude range from 3.6 to 5.1 Each station showed characteristic site amplification property in low-, high- and resonance frequency ranges. In the case of comparing these results to those from S wave energy, lots of information to the site classification work can be gained. Moreover, removal of site amplification can give us more reliable seismic source parameters.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.557-566
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• 2019

The evaluation of the seismic hazard for a given site is to estimate the seismic ground motion at the surface. This is the result of the combination of the action of the seismic source, which generates seismic waves, the propagation of these waves between the source and the site, and site local conditions. The aim of this work is to evaluate the sensitivity of dynamic response of extended structures to spatial variable ground motions (SVGM). All factors of spatial variability of ground motion are considered, especially local site effect. In this paper, a method is presented to simulate spatially varying earthquake ground motions. The scheme for generating spatially varying ground motions is established for spatial locations on the ground surface with varying site conditions. In this proposed method, two steps are necessary. Firstly, the base rock motions are assumed to have the same intensity and are modelled with a filtered Tajimi-Kanai power spectral density function. An empirical coherency loss model is used to define spatial variable seismic ground motions at the base rock. In the second step, power spectral density function of ground motion on surface is derived by considering site amplification effect based on the one dimensional seismic wave propagation theory. Several dynamics analysis of a curved viaduct to various cases of spatially varying seismic ground motions are performed. For comparison, responses to uniform ground motion, to spatial ground motions without considering local site effect, to spatial ground motions with considering coherency loss, phase delay and local site effects are also calculated. The results showed that the generated seismic signals are strongly conditioned by the local site effect. In the same sense, the dynamic response of the viaduct is very sensitive of the variation of local geological conditions of the site. The effect of neglecting local site effect in dynamic analysis gives rise to a significant underestimation of the seismic demand of the structure.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.99-104
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• 2009

We propose a waveform inversion method for SH-wave data obtained in a shallow seismic refraction survey, to determine a 2D inhomogeneous S-wave profile of shallow soils. In this method, a 2.5D equation is used to simulate SH-wave propagation in 2D media. The equation is solved with the staggered grid finite-difference approximation to the 4th-order in space and 2nd-order in time, to compute a synthetic wave. The misfit, defined using differences between calculated and observed waveforms, is minimised with a hybrid heuristic search method. We parameterise a 2D subsurface structural model with blocks with different depth boundaries, and S-wave velocities in each block. Numerical experiments were conducted using synthetic SH-wave data with white noise for a model having a blind layer and irregular interfaces. We could reconstruct a structure including a blind layer with reasonable computation time from surface seismic refraction data.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.161-205
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• 2013

We study seismically induced, anti-plane strain wave motion in a non-homogeneous geological region containing tunnels. Two different scenarios are considered: (a) The first models two tunnels in a finite geological region embedded within a laterally inhomogeneous, layered geological profile containing a seismic source. For this case, labelled as the first boundary-value problem (BVP 1), an efficient hybrid technique comprising the finite difference method (FDM) and the boundary element method (BEM) is developed and applied. Since the later method is based on the frequency-dependent fundamental solution of elastodynamics, the hybrid technique is defined in the frequency domain. Then, an inverse fast Fourier transformation (FFT) is used to recover time histories; (b) The second models a finite region with two tunnels, is embedded in a homogeneous half-plane, and is subjected to incident, time-harmonic SH-waves. This case, labelled as the second boundary-value problem (BVP 2), considers complex soil properties such as anisotropy, continuous inhomogeneity and poroelasticity. The computational approach is now the BEM alone, since solution of the surrounding half plane by the FDM is unnecessary. In sum, the hybrid FDM-BEM technique is able to quantify dependence of the signals that develop at the free surface to the following key parameters: seismic source properties and heterogeneous structure of the wave path (the FDM component) and near-surface geological deposits containing discontinuities in the form of tunnels (the BEM component). Finally, the hybrid technique is used for evaluating the seismic wave field that develops within a key geological cross-section of the Metro construction project in Thessaloniki, Greece, which includes the important Roman-era historical monument of Rotunda dating from the 3rd century A.D.