An Experimental Characterization of Shear Wave Velocity (Vs) in Clean and Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Sand

Abstract

The characteristics of hydrocarbon-contaminated soils have been among major concerns of geotechnical engineers due to its significant frequency of event and also its influential consequences on our surroundings from various environmental and engineering viewpoints. Heretofore, the effects of diverse kinds of hydrocarbon contaminants on majority of geotechnical properties of fine- and coarse-grained soils such as grain size, hydraulic conductivity, plasticity, compressibility, internal friction, cohesion, and shear strength have been investigated. However, there has not been a concentrated research study examining shear wave velocity ( $${\text{V}}_{\text{s}}$$ ) of hydrocarbon-contaminated soils as an important geotechnical property of soil due to this fact that, in small/very small strain levels, the maximum shear modulus of soils ( $${\text{G}}_{ \hbox{max} }$$ ) can be determined using shear wave velocity ( $${\text{G}}_{ \hbox{max} } =\uprho{\text{V}}_{\text{s}}^{2}$$ ). This paper aims to investigate effects of hydrocarbon contamination on shear wave velocity of sandy soils by comparing shear wave velocities in identically prepared clean and contaminated samples. To this aim, an Iranian light crude oil, a standard type of silica sand (Ottawa sand), and a bender element apparatus were used to minutely measure shear wave velocity of clean and crude oil contaminated sand samples. Moreover, dry and quasi-moist tamping methods were employed in order to provide comparable clean and contaminated specimens (containing 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 wt% of crude oil), respectively. Firstly, a comprehensive bender element (BE) and resonant column tests were conducted on the identically prepared clean sand samples at various amounts of frequency (2–20 kHz) and under various confining pressure (50–500 kPa) to find the best methods of accurately determining shear wave travel time in BE tests. Thereafter, BE tests were conducted to examine shear wave velocity in contaminated specimens. Based on the results, it was found that there was a critical value for crude oil content with the maximum shear wave velocity so that shear wave velocity of 4 wt% contaminated sand (Vs-4 wt%) was about 1.2 times higher than clean one (Vs-clean), and contrastingly adding further crude oil up to 6 wt% made a significant reduction in value of shear wave velocity to some extent that Vs-6 wt% was slightly lower than Vs-clean (Vs-6 wt% = 0.95–0.97Vs-clean). Moreover, adding more contaminant (8–12 wt%) into sand had negligible influences on shear wave velocity. In this paper, the effects of crude oil contamination on sand microstructure were also evaluated using scanning electron microscopy.