Investigation of Relationship between Stress and Seismic Velocities on Field Scale

A relationship between seismic wave velocities and the stress state of a material have been largely investigated in small scale lab experiments but never on a large field scale. For investigation of this relationship on a larger scale a 3-D seismic array have been built into a full-size railroad embankment model. Using the three component geophones with vertical and horizontal sledgehammer strikes, P-and S-wave interval velocities was determined and the relationship with the vertical and horizontal stress respectively was investigated. The results show that the parameters found in the large-scale experiments are similar to the ones found in small-scale experiments. There are variations in the data which should be investigated more closely. But the first results from a large-scale experiment look promising.