Development of Correlations between SPT-Shear Wave Velocity Data for Liquefaction Assessment using R

Abstract

The standard penetration test (SPT) is the most popular in-situ field test for geotechnical design and site investigation. MASW test is a seismic test used to measure Shear wave velocity (VS). SPT is a destructive in-situ test, whereas the MASW is a non-destructive, quick, and cost-effective field test. The shear wave velocity for a continuous depth is estimated by the MASW test. This paper presents a model to predict SPT N60 using shear wave velocity data obtained from non-destructive MASW test. The correlations of SPT-shear wave velocity were done using traditional and statistical methods. SPT and MASW field tests were used in conjunction with variety of borehole seismic testing for a number of locations. About 162 numbers SPT and Shear wave velocity test datasets have been collected from existing literature to correlate. The SPT-Shear wave correlations using other parameters for liquefaction assessment have been formed using different regression models such as Linear regression (SLR), Support Vector Machine (SVR), Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) and Locally Estimated Scatterplot Smoothing (LOESS) in R. Predicted N60 values from these correlations were compared with measured N60 values from seismic tests. The developed correlations in this paper have R 2 greater than 90% and these developed correlations are more reliable than existing correlations. So, different geotechnical properties such as bearing capacity, friction angle of soil, etc. can be determined using predicted N60 values obtained from these developed correlations without performing cumbersome destructive tests.