Experiments of joint acquisition of seismic refraction and surface wave data

Dispersive Rayleigh waves, contained in conventional P-wave refraction records, can be used to determine the shear-wave velocity profile. In the present paper, the synergies of a cross interpretation of refraction and surface wave data are exploited using data collected at sites where other geotechnical and geophysical information was available. Selected examples are presented to emphasize the relative advantages and limitations of the two techniques in the cases of - hidden layer, velocity inversions and - shallow water table. Surface wave analysis was performed to estimate the experimental dispersion curves in the f–k domain and the results of the dispersion curves inversion were compared with refraction results in terms of velocity profiles. The experimental results prove that many advantages, in terms of resolution and reliability, can be obtained with joint acquisition and cross interpretation of P-wave refraction and surface wave data, without a significant increase in testing time.