Determination of elastic properties of shallow sedimentary deposits applying a spatial autocorrelation method

The capability of the spatial autocorrelation method for the determination of the elastic properties of shallow sedimentary deposits has been investigated at a test site in which the subsurface structure is known. The technique has been shown very innovative and convenient for this kind of study as no artificial sources are needed, and also overcomes the problems of soil invasive techniques. The method uses the three components of the seismic microtremor recorded simultaneously at different configuration arrays with the possibility to obtain dispersion curves of Rayleigh and Love waves. These curves together with the horizontal to vertical spectral ratio of the seismic microtremors can be used to calculate the S-wave velocities of the sediments. er to test the goodness of this procedure a specific experiment was performed with real data. The underground model obtained from this methodology is compared with the geotechnical information available. Our results are in a good agreement with those models obtained previously by S-wave refraction experiments and borehole measurements.