PROPAGATION OF ELASTIC WAVES IN WATER-SATURATED SOILS

A brief review of the literatures on the titled subject is given.A set of wave equations,taking the inertial coupling effect between soil skeleton and pore water into account,are established forsaturated soils.The preliminary analysis shows that the nature of wave propagation is mainly influencedby permeability coefficient,k.There are three types of waves,two （P-and S-wave） propagating throughsoil skeleton and one（P-wave） through pore water.For a soil with large value of k,compression wavevelocity through pore water will be greater than that through single-phased water,and as k→∞,theformer could be 3;times as great as the latter.For a soil with extremely low permeability,thecompression wave velocity could be either less or greater than that through single-phased water,depend-ing on the rigidity of the soil passing through.Some phenomena observed from tests presented in theliterature may be reasonably explained by the proposed theory herein,and thus more reliable parametersof soil could be obtained from wave velocity measurements.Further studies on this subject are stillneeded.