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Abstract Non-invasive surface wave methods are increasingly being used as the primary technique for estimating a site’s small-strain shear wave velocity (Vs). Yet, in comparison to invasive methods, non-invasive surface wave methods suffer from highly variable standards of practice, with each company/group/analyst estimating surface wave dispersion data, quantifying its uncertainty (or ignoring it in many cases), and performing inversions to obtain Vs profiles in their own unique manner. In response, this work presents a well-documented, production-tested, and easy-to-adopt workflow for developing estimates of experimental surface wave dispersion data with robust measures of uncertainty. This is a key step required for propagating dispersion uncertainty forward into the estimates of Vs derived from inversion. The paper focuses on the two most common applications of surface wave testing: the first, where only active-source testing has been performed, and the second, where both active-source and passive-wavefield testing has been performed. In both cases, clear guidance is provided on the steps to transform experimentally acquired waveforms into estimates of the site’s surface wave dispersion data and quantify its uncertainty. In particular, changes to surface wave data acquisition and processing are shown to affect the resulting experimental dispersion data, thereby highlighting their importance when quantifying uncertainty.more »In addition, this work is accompanied by an open-source Python package, swprocess , and associated Jupyter workflows to enable the reader to easily adopt the recommendations presented herein. It is hoped that these recommendations will lead to further discussions about developing standards of practice for surface wave data acquisition, processing, and inversion.« less

Quantitative dynamic strain measurements of the ground would be useful for engineering scale problems such as monitoring for natural hazards, soil-structure interaction studies, and non-invasive site investigation using full waveform inversion (FWI). Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), a promising technology for these purposes, needs to be better understood in terms of its directional sensitivity, spatial position, and amplitude for application to engineering-scale problems. This study investigates whether the physical measurements made using DAS are consistent with the theoretical transfer function, reception patterns, and experimental measurements of ground strain made by geophones. Results show that DAS and geophone measurements are consistent in both phase and amplitude for broadband (10 s of Hz), high amplitude (10 s of microstrain), and complex wavefields originating from different positions around the array when: (1) the DAS channels and geophone locations are properly aligned, (2) the DAS cable provides good deformation coupling to the internal optical fiber, (3) the cable is coupled to the ground through direct burial and compaction, and (4) laser frequency drift is mitigated in the DAS measurements. The transfer function of DAS arrays is presented considering the gauge length, pulse shape, and cable design. The theoretical relationship between DAS-measured and pointwise strain formore »vertical and horizontal active sources is introduced using 3D elastic finite-difference simulations. The implications of using DAS strain measurements are discussed including directionality and magnitude differences between the actual and DAS-measured strain fields. Estimating measurement quality based on the wavelength-to-gauge length ratio for field data is demonstrated. A method for spatially aligning the DAS channels with the geophone locations at tolerances less than the spatial resolution of a DAS system is proposed.« less