Shear and dilatational wave velocities for unsaturated soils

The primary objective of this study is for presenting some simple-to-use expressions relating the shear and dilatational wave velocities (VS and VP) to some physical and constitutive parameters of unsaturated soils. To this purpose, a simplified formulation is developed using the theory of linear poroelasticity in conjunction with some constitutive parameters widely used in geotechnical engineering. The derived expressions are of practical interest in view of the fact that they could be employed for evaluating the involved soil parameters from VS and VP measurements by in-situ or laboratory geophysical tests.