Imperial College London
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ProfessorCatherineO'Sullivan

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor of Particulate Soil Mechanics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6117cath.osullivan Website

 
 
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Location

 

501Skempton BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Dutta:2019:10.1680/jgele.18.00219,
author = {Dutta, TT and Otsubo, M and Kuwano, R and O'Sullivan, C},
doi = {10.1680/jgele.18.00219},
journal = {Geotechnique Letters},
pages = {1--26},
title = {Estimating stress wave velocity in granular materials: Apparent particle size dependency and appropriate excitation frequency range},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/jgele.18.00219},
volume = {9},
year = {2019}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - There is a lack of consensus in the literature on the influence of the median particle size on stress wave velocityin cohesionless soils. For assemblies of spherical particles with Hertzian contacts, the stress wave velocitiesshould not depend on particle size. However, a link between particle size and stress wave velocity has beenreported in laboratory experiments. In this study, to identify the reasons for the discrepancies, wave velocitymeasurements were performed using planar piezoelectric transducers on four different sizes of alkaline glassbeads and natural silica sands. The experimental results indicate that shear and compression wave velocities areindependent of the median particle size. In accordance with dispersion theory, both the experiments and discreteelement simulations demonstrate that the maximum frequency that can propagate through a granular assembly(i.e., the lowpass frequency) reduces with increasing median particle size. The relationship between the lowpassfrequency and the input signal frequency determines the quality of the received signal and hence the accuracy ofthe interpreted stress wave velocity data. To accurately estimate shear wave velocities, the selected inputfrequencies should match those frequencies which exhibit the largest gain factors and input frequencies shouldnot exceed the half of lowpass frequency. To determine the compression wave velocity, it is suggested to adoptthe start to start method and to choose an input frequency which is slightly lower than the lowpass frequency.
AU  - Dutta,TT
AU  - Otsubo,M
AU  - Kuwano,R
AU  - O'Sullivan,C
DO  - 10.1680/jgele.18.00219
EP  - 26
PY  - 2019///
SN  - 2045-2543
SP  - 1
TI  - Estimating stress wave velocity in granular materials: Apparent particle size dependency and appropriate excitation frequency range
T2  - Geotechnique Letters
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/jgele.18.00219
UR  - https://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/10.1680/jgele.18.00219
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/73669
VL  - 9
ER  -
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