ABSTRACT
Surface wave propagation is influenced by mechanical and geometrical properties of soils. This feature is adopted in civil engineering and earthquake engineering for nondestructive testing and site investigation. The near-surface engineering applications of the surface wave method were first proposed in 1950s to obtain the dynamic properties of soil in situ (Jones, 1958). With little disturbance to environment, this method is recognized as non-intrusive and then finds its applications from regional scale seismic assessment to underground detection. In practice, most surface-wave applications provide a shear-wave velocity profile by a three-step strategy: (1) acquiring experimental data, (2) estimating the experimental dispersion curve through signal
profile in Japan (Satoh et al., 2001), Turkey (Kudo et al., 2002), and United States (Rix et al, 2002). The passive wave method, taking advantage of ambient noise, including traffics, as excitations, is expected to add values to the surface wave method in urban environments.
