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Abstract
1 Introduction
The design of structures to resist earthquake and other dynamic loadings requires the
knowledge of the dynamic properties of the underlying soil strata. The low-amplitude
shear modulus of soils, G*, (measured at cyclic shear strains 7, < 10"0 is regarded
as one of the most important dynamic soil properties and it is used in designing
vibrating machine foundations, as reference level for evaluating dynamic soil
performance and liquefaction potential during earthquake shaking, and for in-situ
evaluation of hard-to-sample deposits like gravels and cobbles (Stokoe et al.^).
A number of in-situ techniques are presently available for the evaluation of low-
amplitude shear modulus of soils, G* (Woods^*-^. The seismic cross-hole and down-
hole methods are, perhaps, the most often used today for profiling near-surface soils.
The Spectral-Analysis-of-Surface-Waves (SASW) method is a new seismic method for
evaluation of the low-amplitude shear modulus of soils as a function of depth and its
popularity increases very rapidly (Stokoe et al.^). In the seismic methods the low-
amplitude shear wave velocity, V^, is first evaluated and then the low-amplitude shear
Transactions on the Built Environment vol 14, 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509
G* = P VJ (1)
Most of the empirical correlations are of the type V^-Ngpr, and have been recently
summarized and discussed by Sykora and Koester^. Oshaki and Iwasaki^ developed
a G^-NSPT correlation based on 200 data points from Japanese soils. They proposed the
following equation, which was derived with a correlation coefficient r = 0.89:
Hara et al. developed a similar correlation based on 100 data points from
Japanese soils and proposed Eqn 3, with r = 0.88:
They also derived separate equations for cohesive soils (clay, marls) and non-
cohesive soils (sand, silt) with correlation coefficients equal to 0.89 and 0.74
Transactions on the Built Environment vol 14, 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509
1000
respectively:
When using the results of Standard Penetration Tests for V^-N^ correlations it
should be kept in mind that even small amounts of gravel, cobbles or boulders in the
soil may affect significantly the values of N^ and thus, distort the equations of
correlation. On the other hand the presence of a significant amount of gravel in a soil
affects the value of dynamic shear modulus and several experimental studies have
focused on this subject (Seed et al."; Bolognesi et al.*). Yoshida et al.*> have
developed an empirical correlation V^-NSPT for gravelly soils:
The scatter of data points and corresponding regression curve for this correlation
are shown in the diagram of Fig. 2, in both logarithmic and linear axes. Besides the
Transactions on the Built Environment vol 14, 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509
22 Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering
ALL SOILS
n = 221-11, r = 0.75
V.(m/sec)=107.6(N,,,)"*
correlation based on all available data, further correlations were also developed for the
two subgroups of data pertaining to non-gravelly and gravelly soils. The regression
equations for these correlations were found to be:
The values of V^ predicted by Eqn 8 and Eqn 9 were found to be higher than the
corresponding values of Equ 4 (Imai and Tonuchr*). This differentiation may be due,
in part to slight differences in the practice of SPT in Japan and Greece (Decourt et
al/). Finally, it should be noted that the Athanasopoulos* correlations included data
points from SPT measurements in which the penetration of Terzaghi samples was
incomplete (<0.45 m). The values of N^ in these cases were derived by linear
extrapolation of blow-count, taking into consideration the penetration achieved by 50
blows of the hammer.
MARL
40 40
KALAMATA KALAMATA
SITE 2 SITE 2
50 50
Figure 3: Soil profile and measured values of Ngp^ and V^ for SITE 2
Transactions on the Built Environment vol 14, 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509
20 - 20 . -
X 30 -
Q_
LU
O
KAUVMATA KALAMATA
SITE 2 SITE 2
Measured values of V., Empirical values of V*, (CLPW) --- Empirical values of V,, (Athanasopoulos)
4 Conclusions
A review of available empirical V^-Nspj correlations was presented and the focus was
placed on two recent correlations developed for soils of Greece. The two Greek
correlations were then compared in terms of predicted values of V,* vs. depth and
predicted values of seismic soil response vs. depth. The comparisons were conducted
for a number of sites where measured values of V^ and N^ were available. It was
found that the "Athanasopoulos" correlation results in values of V^, which are higher
by 8.2%, on the average, with respect to the "CLPW" correlation. The peak values
of ground acceleration, cyclic shear strain and cyclic shear stress, obtained with the
"Athanasopoulos "correlation were found to deviate by + 13%, + 28% and + 13%,
on the average, with respect to the "CLPW" correlation. The corresponding deviation
in the peak spectral accelerations was found to range from -20% to +9%. It is
concluded that the deviation between the two empirical correlations constitutes only
a fraction of the deviations with respect to the measured values and for this reason use
Transactions on the Built Environment vol 14, 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509
0.0
0.0 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2.4
T , sec
Figure 5: Acceleration response spectra for SITE 2 obtained by using measured
and empirically derived values of V^
Acknowledgements