Guidelines for Minimization of Uncertainties and Estimation of a Reliable Shear Wave Velocity Profile Using MASW Testing: A State-of-the-Art Review

Resilience against earthquakes has become important in the current scenario, when numerous events of seismic shaking keep on occurring, especially in regions of high population. For that, reliable seismic site characterization is extremely important. The seismic surface wave methods are the commonly adopted methods for seismic site characterization and subsequent applications. After many evolvements, the multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) has grown to be the widely chosen surface wave method across the globe. However, the method has numerous peculiar specifications regarding its procedures of data acquisition, analysis, and interpretations. Each step in the MASW can induce notable uncertainties in the results. Even a single mistake in any of the procedures can lead to erroneous results, which are difficult to be identified even by any third party. Many such cases have been reported earlier by researchers. Such practices may foster substantial losses because ultimately the MASW results are useful for the generation of the design response spectra. Due to all these reasons, there is an alarming need for the dissemination of knowledge about the guidelines for the reliable practice of MASW testing. This paper provides a comprehensive account of the fundamentals of the MASW method, the ways to implement its three steps of data acquisition, processing, and inversion, and the ways to improve confidence in the results. It presents a detailed and comprehensive literature review on the topic, including the historical developments and theoretical basis, subsequent evolvements, current practices, and recommendations for reliable testing. The amount of references has been kept very high to facilitate a thorough understanding of the topic and draw sufficient inferences. An elaborate description of the uncertainties in the test and how to deal with them has been presented. The parameters to be set while carrying out those three steps have been discussed, and suggestions are presented. The suggestions are based on the field experiences and literature review of the research works by many prominent researchers.