TY - JOUR A1 - Hobiger, M. A1 - Cornou, C. A1 - Wathelet, M. A1 - Di Giulio, G. A1 - Knapmeyer-Endrun, B. A1 - Renalier, F. A1 - Bard, Pierre-Yves A1 - Savvaidis, Alexandros A1 - Hailemikael, S. A1 - Le Bihan, N. A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Theodoulidis, N. T1 - Ground structure imaging by inversions of Rayleigh wave ellipticity sensitivity analysis and application to European strong-motion sites JF - Geophysical journal international N2 - The knowledge of the local soil structure is important for the assessment of seismic hazards. A widespread, but time-consuming technique to retrieve the parameters of the local underground is the drilling of boreholes. Another way to obtain the shear wave velocity profile at a given location is the inversion of surface wave dispersion curves. To ensure a good resolution for both superficial and deeper layers, the used dispersion curves need to cover a wide frequency range. This wide frequency range can be obtained using several arrays of seismic sensors or a single array comprising a large number of sensors. Consequently, these measurements are time-consuming. A simpler alternative is provided by the use of the ellipticity of Rayleigh waves. The frequency dependence of the ellipticity is tightly linked to the shear wave velocity profile. Furthermore, it can be measured using a single seismic sensor. As soil structures obtained by scaling of a given model exhibit the same ellipticity curve, any inversion of the ellipticity curve alone will be ambiguous. Therefore, additional measurements which fix the absolute value of the shear wave velocity profile at some points have to be included in the inversion process. Small-scale spatial autocorrelation measurements or MASW measurements can provide the needed data. Using a theoretical soil structure, we show which parts of the ellipticity curve have to be included in the inversion process to get a reliable result and which parts can be omitted. Furthermore, the use of autocorrelation or high-frequency dispersion curves will be highlighted. The resulting guidelines for inversions including ellipticity data are then applied to real data measurements collected at 14 different sites during the European NERIES project. It is found that the results are in good agreement with dispersion curve measurements. Furthermore, the method can help in identifying the mode of Rayleigh waves in dispersion curve measurements. KW - Inverse theory KW - Surface waves and free oscillations KW - Site effects KW - Computational seismology KW - Wave propagation Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggs005 SN - 0956-540X VL - 192 IS - 1 SP - 207 EP - 229 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Garofalo, F. A1 - Foti, S. A1 - Hollender, F. A1 - Bard, Pierre-Yves A1 - Cornou, C. A1 - Cox, B. R. A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias A1 - Sicilia, D. A1 - Asten, M. A1 - Di Giulio, G. A1 - Forbriger, T. A1 - Guillier, B. A1 - Hayashi, K. A1 - Martin, A. A1 - Matsushima, Satoru A1 - Mercerat, D. A1 - Poggi, V. A1 - Yamanaka, H. T1 - InterPACIFIC project: Comparison of invasive and non-invasive methods for seismic site characterization. Part I: Intra-comparison of surface wave methods JF - Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering N2 - The main scope of the InterPACIFIC (Intercomparison of methods for site parameter and velocity profile characterization) project is to assess the reliability of in-hole and surface-wave methods, used for estimating shear wave velocity. Three test-sites with different subsurface conditions were chosen: a soft soil, a stiff soil and a rock outcrop. This paper reports the surface-wave methods results. Specifically 14 teams of expert users analysed the same experimental surface-wave datasets, consisting of both passive and active data. Each team adopted their own strategy to retrieve the dispersion curve and the shear-wave velocity profile at each site. Despite different approaches, the dispersion curves are quite in agreement with each other. Conversely, the shear-wave velocity profiles show a certain variability that increases in correspondence of major stratigraphic interfaces. This larger variability is mainly due to non-uniqueness of the solution and lateral variability. As expected, the observed variability in V-s,V-30 estimatesis small, as solution non-uniqueness plays a limited role. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Surface-wave methods KW - Dispersion curve KW - Inversion KW - V-s,V-30 KW - Site characterization KW - MASW KW - Microtremors KW - Rayleigh waves KW - Geophysical methods Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2015.12.010 SN - 0267-7261 SN - 1879-341X VL - 82 SP - 222 EP - 240 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wathelet, Marc A1 - Guillier, B. A1 - Roux, P. A1 - Cornou, C. A1 - Ohrnberger, Matthias T1 - Rayleigh wave three-component beamforming BT - signed ellipticity assessment from high-resolution frequency-wavenumber processing of ambient vibration arrays JF - Geophysical journal international N2 - The variation of Rayleigh ellipticity versus frequency is gaining popularity in site characterization. It becomes a necessary observable to complement dispersion curves when inverting shear wave velocity profiles. Various methods have been proposed so far to extract polarization from ambient vibrations recorded on a single three-component station or with an array of three-component sensors. If only absolute values were recovered 10 yr ago, new array-based techniques were recently proposed with enhanced efficiencies providing also the ellipticity sign. With array processing, higher-order modes are often detected even in the ellipticity domain. We suggest to explore the properties of a high-resolution beamforming where radial and vertical components are explicitly included. If N is the number of three-component sensors, 2N x 2N cross-spectral density matrices are calculated for all presumed directions of propagation. They are built with N radial and N vertical channels. As a first approach, steering vectors are designed to fit with Rayleigh wave properties: the phase shift between radial and vertical components is either -Pi/2 or Pi/2. We show that neglecting the ellipticity tilt due to attenuation has only minor effects on the results. Additionally, we prove analytically that it is possible to retrieve the ellipticity value from the usual maximization of the high-resolution beam power. The method is tested on synthetic data sets and on experimental data. Both are reference sites already analysed by several authors. A detailed comparison with previous results on these cases is provided. KW - Fourier analysis KW - Time-series analysis KW - Site effects KW - Surface waves and free oscillations KW - Wave propagation Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggy286 SN - 0956-540X SN - 1365-246X VL - 215 IS - 1 SP - 507 EP - 523 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER -