ESTIMATION OF SITE AMPLIFICATION FROM DAHAN DOWNHOLE RECORDINGS

Abstract

Four-level Dahan downhole recordings are used to investigate site amplification due to the near-surface structure. The downhole array is installed at the depths of 0 m (surface), 50, 100 and 200 m. Eight sets of data presenting well-separated incident and reflected waves (from the free surface) are selected to analyse the site amplification. Five techniques of spectral ratios have been tested to determine the most reliable way to estimate site response. The superior one is the ratio of Root-Mean-Square (RMS) Fourier amplitude spectra, because it has the minimum number of pseudopeaks. However, the pseudopeaks can be further reduced by omitting those ratios with small denominators. Results show that the amplification factors are nearly uniform at the depths of 50 and 100 m, where their values fall between one and two. This factor is frequency-dependent at the surface and in the range from two to five under 6 Hz. These results agree well with those from time-domain analyses and the transmission-coefficient estimation except that the latter overestimates the amplification factor of the surface station. This suggests that the shallow velocity structure provided by the geotechnical survey might be underestimated. Numerical modelling also supports the underestimation of velocity at near surface since the synthetic SH waves based on a modified velocity model can match these observations well.