Ambient noise characterisation of compacted ground

Speaker: Chin Leo

Affiliation: University of Western Sydney

Time: Tuesday 29/01/2013 from 14:00 to 15:00

Venue: Access Grid UWS. Presented from Penrith (Y239), accessible from Parramatta (EB.1.32) and Campbelltown (26.1.50).

Abstract: Ground improvement works are commonly required to overcome poor underlying soils in conjunction with infrastructure and housing development. The quality of ground compaction is typically verified by well established classical methods, namely, dry density and moisture content measurements, CPT, SPT, DMT and so forth. The speaker will present his current research to introduce a non-classical characterisation method, the horizontal to vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) technique, to assess the quality of ground compaction. This method involves measurement of ambient vibrations or microtremors which are ubiquitous on earth’s surface, and applying the recorded HVSR to infer the shear wave velocity profiles of the compacted ground after calibration against in situ test data. The proposed methodology to apply the HVSR technique to characterize large compacted fills at Penrith Lakes quarry in Western Sydney will be presented.

Biography: Chin Leo is a civil engineer with research and industry experience in geotechnical, geoenvironmental and infrastructure engineering. He obtained his PhD from the University of Sydney in 1994 and is currently an Associate Professor at SCEM, UWS. He began his research career in the 1990s studying groundwater and contamination problems in soils. During this period, he developed several numerical models for contaminant migration in porous media. Since early 2000s, he has been involved in poromechanics research dealing with consolidation, sedimentation-consolidation of soft soils, tunnel closure, vibrations of piles and foundations embedded in porous media. In the last 5 years, his research also focuses on the characterization and remediation of geomaterials, namely: EPS geofoam, red mud, high power ultrasound remediation of contaminated soils and characterization of sites using microtremor measurements. He regularly reviews for Computers and Geotechnics, International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, and International Journal of Geomechanics, Geotextiles and Geomembranes.