Predicting Geotechnical Parameters from Seismic Wave Velocity Using Artificial Neural Networks

Geotechnical investigation plays an indispensable role in site characterization and provides necessary data for various construction projects. However, geotechnical measurements are time-consuming, point-based, and invasive. Non-destructive geophysical measurements (seismic wave velocity) can complement geotechnical measurements to save project money and time. However, correlations between geotechnical and seismic wave velocity are crucial in order to maximize the benefit of geophysical information. In this work, artificial neural networks (ANNs) models are developed to forecast geotechnical parameters from seismic wave velocity. Specifically, published seismic wave velocity, liquid limit, plastic limit, water content, and dry density from field and laboratory measurements are used to develop ANN models. Due to the small number of data, models are developed with and without the validation step in order to use more data for training. The results indicate that the performance of the models is improved by using more data for training. For example, predicting seismic wave velocity using more data for training improves the R2 value from 0.50 to 0.78 and reduces the ASE from 0.0174 to 0.0075, and MARE from 30.75 to 18.53. The benefit of adding velocity as an input parameter for predicting water content and dry density is assessed by comparing models with and without velocity. Models incorporating the velocity information show better predictability in most cases. For example, predicting water content using field data including the velocity improves the R2 from 0.75 to 0.85 and reduces the ASE from 0.0087 to 0.0051, and MARE from 10.68 to 7.78. A comparison indicates that ANN models outperformed multilinear regression models. For example, predicting seismic wave velocity using field plus lab data has an ANN derived R2 value that is 81.39% higher than regression model.