Propagation of elastic waves in water-saturated soils

Abstract

A brief review of the literatures on the titled subject is given. A set of wave equations, taking the inertial coupling effect between soil skeleton and pore water into account, are established for saturated soils. The preliminary analysis shows that the nature of wave propagation is mainly influenced by permeability coefficient,k. There are three types of waves, two (P-and S-wave) propagating through soil skeleton and one(P-wave) through pore water. For a soil with large value ofk, compression wave velocity through pore water will be greater than that through single-phased water, and ask→∞, the former could be$\sqrt 3$ times as great as the latter. For a soil with extremely low permeability, the compression wave velocity could be either less or greater than that through single-phased water, depending on the rigidity of the soil passing through. Some phenomena observed from tests presented in the literature may be reasonably explained by the proposed theory herein, and thus more reliable parameters of soil could be obtained from wave velocity measurements. Further studies on this subject are still needed.