Inversion of Rayleigh Wave Dispersion Curve Extracting from Ambient Noise Based on DNN Architecture

Abstract

The inversion of the Rayleigh wave dispersion curve is a crucial step in obtaining the shear wave velocity (VS) of near-surface structures. Due to the characteristics of being ill-posed and nonlinear, the existing inversion methods presented low efficiency and ambiguity. To address these challenges, we describe a six-layer deep neural network algorithm for the inversion of 1D VS from dispersion curves of the fundamental mode Rayleigh surface waves. Our method encompasses several key advancements: (1) we use a finer layer to construct the 1-D VS model of the subsurface, which can describe a more complex near-surface geology structure; (2) considering the ergodicity and orderliness of strata evolution, the constrained Markov Chain was employed to reconstruct the complex velocity model; (3) we build a practical and complete dispersion curve inversion process. Our model tested the performance using a random synthetic dataset and the influence of different factors, including the number of training samples, learning rate, and the selection of optimal artificial neural network architecture. Finally, the field test dispersion data were used to further verify the method’s effectiveness. Our synthetic dataset proved the diversity and rationality of the random VS model. The results of training and predicting showed higher accuracy and could speed the inversion process (only ~15 s), and we proved the important effect of different factors. The outcomes derived from the application of this technique to the measured dispersion data in the Yellow River Delta exhibit a strong correlation with the outcomes obtained from the integration of the very fast simulated annealing method and the downhill simplex method, as well as the statistically derived shear wave velocity data of the sedimentary layers in the Yellow River Delta. From a long-term perspective, our method can provide an alternative for deriving VS models for complex near-surface structures.