Shear wave profiles in tertiary marine sediments in west central South Carolina

The in-situ Vs profile in soils usually increases with depth due to its stress-dependent behavior. For instance, Lew and Campbell (1985) observed that Vs increases as a power law with depth for various Quaternary age soils. More recent studies by Andrus et al. (2003, 2007) also showed a similar trend. On the other hand, the representative Vs profile at the Savannah River Site (SRS) located in western South Carolina next to Georgia shows an opposite trend. It has been known the SRS has complex geological conditions which consist of very old Miocene and Eocene sediments, primarily layered deposits of sands, clayey sands, silty sands, and inter-bedded clays which exhibit an apparent and unusual stress history profile. This paper attempts to examine the expected reasons with respect to these anomalous in-situ Vs trends at the SRS, including ageing, desiccation, overconsolidation, cementation, diagenesis, and other factors.