ABSTRACT
In this study, to examine the effect of the fabric (inherent) anisotropy of a sand specimen on the initial stiffness, the shear wave velocity was measured by the bender element method on Toyoura sand and a volcanic ash sand. Two kinds of sample preparation methods were adopted: the dry-vibration (DV) method, and the MSP-F method. In the MSP-F method, the air-dry sand was pluviated into a container from a MSP-apparatus. The sand deposited in the container was frozen in a freezer. Specimens with an angle between the axial direction of the triaxial specimen and the pluviation direction of 0° and 90° were cut from the frozen sand blocks. The sand specimens were isotropically consolidated under several kinds of confining pressures ranging from 30 to 400 kPa. The shear wave velocities were measured in three different directions (VH, HH, HV-wave).
