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In-Service Assessment of Road Sinkholes With 2D Ambient Noise Tomography
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2021-11-01
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[PDF-9.95 MB]
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Edition:Final Report 9/1/2019 – 11/30/2021
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Abstract:Seismic methods are often used for detection of pre-collapsed sinkholes (voids) under roadway for remediation to minimize the risk to the safety of the traveling public. While the active-source seismic methods can provide accurate subsurface profiles, they require closing the traffic flow for hours during testing and potentially cause sinkhole collapse due to ground perturbation by source excitation. To address these issues, this project developed a novel 2D ambient noise tomography (2D ANT) method for imaging voids under roadway. Instead of using the approximated Green’s function, whose required assumption of energy balance at both sides of each receiver pair is rarely satisfied, the cross-correlation function of traffic noise recordings is inverted directly to obtain velocity structures. To adopt the concepts of seismic interferometry and derive the model structural kernel, passing-by vehicles are assumed as moving sources along the receiver array. The source power-spectrum density is determined via the reverse-time imaging approach to approximate the source distribution. The 2D ANT method was first demonstrated on realistic synthetic models with the accurate recovery of the model variable layers and buried voids. To demonstrate its effectiveness with the real-world problems, we successfully applied the method to field data at four test sites in Florida. The field experimental results show that the method is capable of resolving subsurface S-wave velocity (Vs) structures and detecting voids and anomalies at various sizes and depths. With typically available traffic noises (5-20 Hz) induced by passing vehicles, the method can characterize subsurface profiles at good resolutions (3-ft pixel to 60-ft depth and 5-ft pixel to 150-ft depth). The inverted Vs profiles generally agree with the invasive tests (SPT and CPT), including identification of voids, anomalies and depth of limestone layers. Based on the field results of noise recordings with the minimum disruption of the traffic flow, the developed ANT method is an effective approach for characterization of roadway substructure and detection of road sinkholes. A standalone GUI software of the 2D ANT analysis has also been developed and transferred to FDOT for future uses.
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