Waves In Seismology

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In seismology, there are several types of waves studied, each of these waves have characteristics that define them. Seismic waves can be split into two categories, and they are body waves and surface waves. Body waves travel and move within the earths subsurface and inner layers. There are two types of body waves, P-Waves also known as compressional waves or primary waves, and S-Waves also called secondary or shear waves. The S-Waves have a vertical (Sv) and horizontal (Sh) component. “In an infinite homogenous isotropic medium, only P and S waves exist” (Telford et. al, 1990). On the other hand, as indicated by the name, surface waves travel and move along the surface of the earth. In general, surface waves have a lower frequency than body waves, therefore, they can easily be distinguished from body waves on a seismogram. There are two types of surface waves, Love waves and Rayleigh Waves. Love waves is the fastest surface wave, its movement mainly consists of a side to side completely horizontal motion. Rayleigh (1885) waves are surface waves that “roll” along the ground; they are a consequence of interfering P and Sv-Waves. Our project …show more content…

Stokoe II and Nazarian (1983) created method termed spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) and its purpose is to scrutinize dispersion curves of ground roll to yield near surface S-wave velocity profiles. In the spectral analysis of surface wave technique, we use the spectral analysis of ground roll created by an impulsive source, such as a weight drop, and the resulting waves would be recorded on a pair of receivers, also called geophones on land surveys. The data will be examined in the frequency domain in order to create a dispersion curve by calculating the phase difference between each deployment of receiver pairs (Park et. al,

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