Seismic Geotechnical Site Characterization by MASW-REMI Method: Importance of Higher Modes of Rayleigh Waves

In the ’90 several researchers have realized that, when dealing with inversely dispersive sites, the MASW method based only on the fundamental mode can really cause erroneous Vs profiles, hence an erroneous seismic site characterization. When dealing with inversely dispersive sites ( i.e. sites where stiffness discontinuities exist, soft layers trapped between stiffer layers or viceversa stiff layers trapped between softer layers) higher modes of Rayleigh waves must be combined together with the fundamental mode to calculate the effective or apparent dispersion curve (Lai 1998, Roma 2001-2002-2006), in order to achieve a reliable Vs profile and a reliable seismic site characterization. It is not sufficient to calculate the numerical higher modes and use them separately for the inversion process, because it is practically impossible to distinguish the experimental higher modes from the field data in the geotechnical scale. It is well known that the apparent experimental dispersion curve that is determined from the field data is the result of a superposition of the several higher modes. In this article the potentialities of a new algorithm (www.masw.it, Roma 2001) that calculates the apparent dispersion curve using all higher modes are shown into an application to a real case.