Estimation of the propagation characteristics of elastic waves propagating through a partially saturated sand soil

Recently, landslides due to heavy rain and/or earthquakes have been increasing and severe damage occurred in Japan in some cases (e.g., Chigira et al., 2013, Geomorph.). One of the principle factors activating landslides is groundwater. Continuous measurements of moisture in soil and/or pore pressure are performed to investigate the groundwater behavior. However, such measurements give information on only local behavior of the groundwater. To monitor the state of target slope, it is better to measure signals affected by the behavior of groundwater in a widely surrounding region. The elastic waves propagating through the medium under the target slope are one of candidates of such signals. In this study, we measure propagating waves through a sand soil made in laboratory, injecting water into it from the bottom. We investigate the characteristics of the propagating waves. We drop sand particles in a container (750 mm long, 300 mm wide and 400 mm high) freely and made a sand soil. The sand soil consists of two layers. One is made of larger sand particles (0.2-0.4 mm in diameter) and the other is made of smaller sand particles (0.05-0.2 mm in diameter). The dry density of these sand layers is about 1.45 g/cm3. We install a shaker for generating elastic waves, accelerometers and pore pressure gauges in the sand soil. We apply small voltage steps repeatedly, and we continuously measure elastic waves propagating through the sand soil at a sampling rate of 51.2 ksps for a period including the water injection period. We estimate the spatio-temporal variation in the maximum cross-correlation coefficients and the corresponding time lags, using template waveforms recorded in the initial period as references. The coefficient for the waveforms recorded at the accelerometer attached to the tip of the shaker is almost stable in high values with a slight decrease down to 0.94 in the period when the sand particles around the shaker are considered to become wet. On the other hand, the coefficients for the waveforms recorded by accelerometers located more than 300 mm away from the shaker gradually decreased down to about 0.5. Carefully taking into account of the temporal variations in the source time function, we estimate the propagation characteristics of elastic waves, and compare the temporal variation of them and the record of the pore pressure gauges.