Application of Elastic Wave Velocity for Estimation of Soil Depth

Hyunwook Choo,Hyung-Koo Yoon,Hwandon Jun

doi:10.3390/app8040600

Hyunwook Choo, Hyung-Koo Yoon + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/app8040600

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Abstract

Because soil depth is a crucial factor for predicting the stability at landslide and debris flow sites, various techniques have been developed to determine soil depth. The objective of this study is to suggest the graphical bilinear method to estimate soil depth through seismic wave velocity. Seismic wave velocity rapidly changes at the interface of two different layers due to the change in material type, packing type, and contact force of particles and thus, it is possible to pick the soil depth based on seismic wave velocity. An area, which is susceptible to debris flow, was selected, and an aerial survey was performed to obtain a topographic map and digital elevation model. In addition, a seismic survey and a dynamic cone penetration test were performed in this study. The comparison between the soil depth based on dynamic cone tests and the graphical bilinear method shows good agreement, indicating that the newly suggested soil depth estimating method may be usefully applied to predict soil depth.

Highlights

In assessing the stability of landslide or debris flow areas, both hydrological and geotechnical properties are the key parameters [1,2,3,4,5,6] among the various geotechnical properties such as soil strength, hydraulic conductivity, and friction angle, the soil depth is the most important parameter because the capacity for inflow and outflow of water is related to the soil thickness
This paper suggests methods for the determination of soil depth through seismic wave velocity measurements
The graphical bilinear method is newly introduced, and the soil depth estimated with the suggested method is compared with the result of dynamic cone penetration tests

Summary

Introduction

In assessing the stability of landslide or debris flow areas, both hydrological and geotechnical properties are the key parameters [1,2,3,4,5,6] among the various geotechnical properties such as soil strength, hydraulic conductivity, and friction angle, the soil depth is the most important parameter because the capacity for inflow and outflow of water is related to the soil thickness. Excavation of multiple pits for the estimation of soil depth is very expensive and time-consuming. Soil depth shows substantial spatial variation; the reliability of the above methods may be low, leading to the development of several models that consider the spatial distribution of soil depth. [11] estimated soil depth based on the mass balance between soil production from underlying bedrock and divergence of diffusive soil transport. Even though these models are advantageous for obtaining soil depth across

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