UC Santa Barbara

Instrumented geotechnical field sites are designed to capture the infrequent but critically important in situ case histories of ground response, deformation, and liquefaction during significant earthquakes that generate high intensity ground shaking and large strains. The University of California at Santa Barbara has been monitoring densely instrumented geotechnical array field sites for almost three decades, with continuous recording now for more than a decade. When seismic waves travel into soil with sufficiently large ground motions, the soil behaves nonlinearly meaning the shear modulus of the material decreases from the linear value observed during weak ground motions. The degraded shear modulus can continue to affect a site for a period of time by changing the soil response during smaller ground motions after the large event. Decreased shear modulus is inferred when a decrease of shear wave velocity between two sensors in a vertical downhole array is observed. This velocity is calculated by measuring the difference in shear wave arrival times between the sensors using normalized cross correlation. The trend of decreasing shear wave velocity with increasing peak ground acceleration is observed at multiple geotechnical array field sites. The length of time the decreased velocity remains following stronger shaking is analyzed using more than 450 events over more than a decade at the Wildlife Liquefaction Array (WLA). Using both monthly and yearly velocity averages between sensors, there is evidence that suggests the shear wave velocity remains low over a period of months following larger significant shaking events at the site. In addition, at WLA there is evidence that the decrease in shear wave velocity can be detected at ground motion levels as low as 20 cm/s2.

Additionally at the Garner Valley Downhole Array, a permanent cross-hole experiment is used to measure velocity changes in the soil with changing water table height. An underground hammer source swings once a week and is recorded on two geophones at the same depth in a line adjacent to the source. Data collected from December 2010 to June 2012 and again from August 2015 to June 2017 is analyzed. That results shows a strong correlation between water table height and the shear wave velocity in the sediment, with changes of almost 5% over the course of seasonal water table variation.