New findings in high-frequency surface wave method

Multi channel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW) analyzes high-frequency Rayleigh waves to determine near-surface shear (S)-wave velocities. This method is getting increasingly attention in the near-surface geophysics and geotechnique community in the past 20 years because of its non-invasive, non-destructive, efficient, and low-cost advantages. They are viewed by near-surface geophysics community as one of most promise techniques in the future. We introduce some research results about propagation and applications of high-frequency surface waves proposed by near-surface geophysical research group at China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) in recent years. Non-geometric wave exists uniquely in near-surface materials, especially in unconsolidated sediments. It is valuable for a quick and accurate estimation of S-wave velocity of the surface layer. Our study shows that non-geometric waves are leaky waves and they are dispersive. Leaky surface wave could cause misidentification when treating the leaky-wave energy as fundamental or higher modes Rayleigh wave. Such misidentification will result in wrong inversion results. By obtaining Rayleigh-wave Green's function after separating fundamental- and higher-mode Rayleigh waves, we verify the feasibility of virtual source method in Rayleigh-wave survey, which could tremendously decreases the cost of field works. Compared to Rayleigh waves, a fewer parameters are involved in Multichannel Analysis of Love Waves (MALW), which makes Love-wave dispersion curves simpler than Rayleigh waves. As a result, inversion of Love waves is more stable and the degree of non-uniqueness is reduced. Images of Love-wave energy are usually sharper and of higher resolution than those from Rayleigh waves. This make picking Love-wave phase velocities much easier and more accurate. Analysis on relationship between surface-wave wavelength and penetrating depth by using Jacobian matrix shows that: as for fundamental mode with the same wavelength, Rayleigh wave can see 1.3~1.4 times deeper than Love waves, however, their penetrating depths are similar for higher modes. We also make some attempts on time-domain Love-wave waveform inversion. We divide the subsurface model into different sizes of blocks according to resolution of Love waves. We remove the source effect by deconvolution, and achieve an appropriate subsurface S-wave velocity model via updating S-wave velocity of each block to fit observed waveforms. This method does not need horizontal-layered-model assumption, and can be applied to any kind of 2D media.