The Use of Surface Waves in Geotechnical Engineering, which Future?

Abstract

The use of surface waves (SW) in seismology is well known since the pioneering works after the First World War in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s, thanks to computer and instrumental improvements, surface waves started to be intensively adopted in global seismology [1-3]. Engineering applications started shortly after, but for their diffusion we have to wait the work of Stokoe and colleagues which introduced the SASW method (Spectral Analysis of Surface Waves) [4,5]. After the introduction of multi-channels methods, Multi channels Analysis of Surface Waves, SWs rapidly become standard practice in engineering geophysical prospecting. Nowadays surface wave methods are the most powerful and used tools for in situ shear wave velocity estimation, basing on the dispersive properties of the layered media [6-8].