Laboratory-scale characterization of saturated soil samples through ultrasonic techniques

The propagation of poroelastic waves in a soil specimen is dependent on the physical and mechanical properties of the soil. In the geotechnical practice, such properties are obtained through in-situ geotechnical testings or element soil testings in the laboratory. These methods require almost advanced equipment and both testing and sample preparation may be expensive and time-consuming. This paper aims to present an algorithm for a laboratory-scale ultrasonic non-destructive testing to determine the physical and mechanical properties of saturated soil samples based on the distribution of stress waves. The ultrasonic setup, in comparison to most conventional soil lab testing equipment, is low-cost and non-invasive such that it reduces the soil disturbance. For this purpose, a poro-elastodynamic forward solver and differential evolution global optimization algorithm were applied to characterize the porosity, density, and other mechanical properties for a soil column. The forward solver was developed based on a semi-analytical solution which does not require intensive computational efforts encountered in standard numerical techniques such as the finite element method. It was concluded that the proposed high-frequency ultrasonic technique characterizes effectively the saturated soil samples based on the output stress wave measured by the receiver. This development makes geotechnical investigations time-efficient and cost-effective, and as such more suited to applications in remote areas.