Site characterization using full waveform inversion

Abstract We discuss recent progress in the full-waveform-based imaging of probed soils, with geotechnical site characterization applications in mind. The primary goal is the reconstruction of the material profile of near-surface, arbitrarily heterogeneous formations, in terms of the formation's spatially distributed elastic properties, using elastic waves as the probing agent. We describe first the formulation and numerical resolution of the underlying time-dependent inverse medium problem; we report briefly on numerical experiments using synthetic data and artificial target soil profiles. These demonstrate robust reconstruction. We then report extensively on the details of a field experiment, whose records we subsequently used to drive the inversion algorithms in order to characterize the site where the field experiment took place. Lastly, we compare the inverted site profile with profiles obtained using the Spectral-Analysis-of-Surface-Waves (SASW) method, in an attempt to compare our methodology against a widely used concurrent inversion approach. We also compare the inverted profile at select locations with the results of independently performed CPT tests. Overall, whether exercised by synthetic or by physical data, the full waveform inversion method we discuss herein appears quite promising for the robust subsurface imaging of near-surface deposits in support of geotechnical site characterization investigations.