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CISM COURSES AND LECTURES

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Giulio Maier - Milan
Jean Salengon - Palaiseau
Wilhelm Schneider - Wien

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Carlo Tasso - Udine

The series presents lecture notes, monographs, edited works and

proceedings in the field of Mechanics, Engineering, Computer Science
and Applied Mathematics.
Purpose of the series is to make known in the international scientific
and technical community results obtained in some of the activities
organized by CISM, the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences.
INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR MECHANICAL SCIENCES

COURSES AND LECTURES - No. 481

SURFACE WAVES IN GEOMECHANICS:

DIRECT AND INVERSE MODELLING FOR
SOILS AND ROCKS

EDITED BY
CARLO G. LAI
EUCENTRE, PAVIA, ITALY

KRZYSZTOF WILMANSKI
WEIERSTRASS INSTITUT-WIAS, BERLIN, GERMANY

SpringerWien NewYork
The publication of this volume was co-sponsored and co-financed by the UNESCO Venice
Office - Regional Bureau for Science in Europe (ROSTE) and its content corresponds to a
CISM Advanced Course supported by the same UNESCO Regional Bureau.

This volume contains 163 illustrations

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© 2005 by CISM, Udine
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ISBN-10 3-211-27740-4 SpringerWienNewYork

ISBN-13 978-3-211-27740-9 SpringerWienNewYork
 PREFACE

Theories of surface waves develop since the end of XIX century and many fundamental
problems like existence, phase and group velocities, attenuation (quality factor), mode
conversion, etc. have been, in part successfully, solved within the framework of such
simple models as ideal fluids^ or linear elasticity. However, a sufficiently complete
presentation of this subject, particularly for solids, is still missing in the literature. The
sole exception is the book of I. A. Viktorov^ which contains an extensive discussion of
fundamental properties of surface waves in homogeneous and stratified linear elastic
solids with particular emphasis on contributions of Russian scientists. Unfortunately,
the book has never been translated to English and its Russian version is also hardly
available.
Practical applications of surface waves develop intensively since a much shorter
period of time than theories even though the motivation of discoverers of surface waves
such as Lord Rayleigh stems from their appearance in geophysics and seismology.
Nowadays the growing interest in practical applications of surface waves stem from
the following two main factors:
surface waves are ideal for developing relatively cheap and convenient methods of
nondestructive testing of various systems spanning from nanomaterials (e.g.
surface coating) through semiconductors (e.g. detection of lattice defects), metals
and composites (e.g. detection of surface cracks), near-surface geophysical and
geotechnical characterization of geomaterials (e.g. determination of the speeds of
propagation of longitudinal and transversal waves, porosity, etc.) to seismological
structures (e.g. investigation of the Earth crust and of its upper mantle);
- the reliability of surface wave-based techniques increases rapidly through the
improvement of testing equipment (e.g. laser techniques, ''intelligent" geophones
with remote connections, etc.) and interpretation software (e.g. simulated
annealing, waveform and fractal inversion, enumerative algorithms, etc.).
The aim of the CISM course entitled "Surface Waves in Geomechanics: Direct and
Inverse Modelling for Soils and Rocks" held in Udine on September 6-10, 2004, was
to cover both theoretical and experimental aspects of surface waves with special
emphasis on applications to geomaterials for near-surface, non-invasive
characterization of sites. Although the frequency range used in these field applications
varies typically in the band from 0.5-1 Hz to 100 Hz, in geophysical laboratory
measurements of soil specimens are applied much higher frequencies. For this reason.

^ e.g. John V. Wehhausen and Edmund V. Laitone; Surface Waves, in: S. Flilgge, C. Truesdell (eds.), Encyclopedia of
Physics, vol. IX, Fluid Dynamics III, Springer, Berlin, 1960. See also the online edition. Regents of the University of
California, 2002 (www, coe. herkelev. edu/Surface Waves/).
^ I. A. Viktorov; Zvukovye povierkhnostnye volny v tverdykh telakh (Acoustic surface waves in solids, in Russian),
Nauka, Moscow, 1981.
 theoretical considerations of these notes are not limited to low frequency
approximations that are typical of near-surface geophysics.
The articles which we present in this volume can be divided into four groups. The
first group of two contributions (Rix and Foti) contains a thorough description of
surface wave methods for geotechnical site characterization. Chapter 1 in particular
illustrates in some details the field equipment used in surface wave testing as well as
an updated overview of the signal processing techniques used to construct the
experimental dispersion curve(s) in both active and passive testing. The chapter ends
with an introduction to the inverse problem associated with surface wave data and an
illustration of the strategies used to overcome its inherent ilUposedness. Chapter 2 is
also dedicated to the applications of surface wave testing for geotechnical
characterization but here the focus is more on enlighting the limitations and
drawbacks of the various techniques used in surface wave analysis and to illustrate the
advantages of a joint inversion with seismic refraction and electric data.
The second group (Lai, Kausel) is devoted to the theoretical analysis of surface
waves in vertically inhomogeneous, viscoelastic solids. Two main issues are addressed
in these contributions: an illustration of the main characteristics of surface wave
propagation in linear viscoelastic, vertically inhomogeneous continua in both forward
and inverse modelling and an introduction to computational methods for generalized
surface and interface waves in stratified media. Chapter 3 gives a detailed account of
the theory of surface waves in linear, one-constituent, vertically inhomogeneous,
dissipative continua. Although the basic theory is developed for both Love and
Rayleigh waves, most of the focus is dedicated to Rayleigh waves because they are
more relevant in the applications. The chapter begins with an illustration of standard
results of the theory of surface wave propagation in elastic and weakly dissipative
media (including solution of the Lamb's problem) using the formalism of variational
calculus. Then the full theory of Rayleigh wave propagation is developed for
arbitrarily dissipative linear viscoelastic materials. The chapter final section
illustrates the main properties of the inverse problem associated with surface wave
motion focusing in particular on the joint inversion of dispersion and attenuation data.
Chapter 4 is an introduction to computational methods in geomechanics. It begins with
a brief review of normal modes in simple systems which are then used to illustrate the
fundamental concepts of wave propagation, including complex wave spectra. These
concepts are then generalized to the case of horizontally stratified media through the
Stiffness Matrix Method (SMM) and its discrete counterpart the Thin Layer Method
(TLM) which constitutes a powerful tool to obtain the normal modes for both
propagating and evanescent generalized surface and interface waves.
The third group (Wilmanski, Albers) presents a review of theoretical results for
various interface waves of single- and two-component elastic materials. Apart from
classical Rayleigh waves. Love, Stoneley, various leaky waves, etc. are presented.
Chapter 5 contains the theory of the most common classical surface and interfacial
waves. In particular, it is shown how the analysis of the dispersion relation yields
seismograms, some comments are made on pseudosurface (leaky) Rayleigh and Love
waves. It ends with the introduction to the analysis of surface waves in poroelastic
saturated materials. This problem is the subject of the detailed numerical analysis in
Chapter 6. This part contains also some unpublished results on attenuation of leaky
surface waves in such materials.
Finally, the fourth group (Maugin) is devoted to theoretical foundations of
nonlinear surface waves (solitons). Chapter 7 contains the presentation of the most
popular nonlinear differential equations, such as Korteweg-de Vries, Sine-Gordon,
nonlinear Schrodinger, Zakharov system, which lead to the existence of soliton
solutions. The analysis of the nonlinear surface waves without and with dispersion
presented in this contribution is based on the second order approximation of nonlinear
elasticity. Some nonlocal effects for solitary Rayleigh waves are also indicated.

This volume contains two appendixes. The first is a short essay (Lancellotta)
devoted to an illustration of certain features of experimental soil behaviour and of its
testing by wave propagation techniques, a series of remarks are made in relation to the
dependence of soil mechanical response on current mean effective pressure
(barotropy) and current porosity (pycnotropy) and by the induced anisotropy.
The second appendix to the book is a CD (Kausel, Rix and Lai) containing
freeware computer software for wave propagation problems in stratified media
(Kausel) and surface wave analysis (Rix and Lai). See the CD content for a detailed
description of the programs together with the instructions for their installation.

Carlo G. Lai
Krzysztof Wilmanski
 CONTENTS

Preface

Near-Surface Site Characterization Using Surface Waves

by GJ. Rix 1

Surface Wave Testing for Geotechnical Characterization

byS.Foti 47

Surface Waves in Dissipative Media: Forward and Inverse

Modelling
by C.G.Lai 73

Waves Propagation Modes: From Simple Systems to Layered

Soils
by E. Kausel 165

Elastic Modelling of Surface Waves in Single and

Multicomponent Systems
by K. Wilmanski 203

Modelling of Surface Waves in Poroelastic Saturated Materials

by Means of a Two Component Continuum
byB.Albers 277

Theory of Nonlinear Surface Waves and Solitons

by G. Maugin 325

Appendixes

A Experimental Soil Behaviour: its Testing by Waves and Engineering Applications

by R. Lancellotta

B CD containing freeware computer software for wave propagation problems in

stratified media and surface wave analysis
by E. Kausel, and G.J. Rix & C. G. Lai