Paul W. Mayne

Paul W. Mayne
Geoengineering Consultant, Emeritus Professor- Geosystems Engineering Group,
School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA USA



Dr. Paul Mayne is an international consultant on geotechnical site characterization and the recent 2023 Terzaghi Lecturer at the GeoCongress in Los Angeles. Paul is the author of Synthesis 368: Cone Penetration Testing (2007; www.trb.org), co-author on the 2019 NCHRP Manual on Subsurface Investigations, and The Cone Penetration Test (2023): Better Information. Better Decisions (www.conetec. com). With 47 years in geotechnics, Paul has produced some 375 publications, delivered 170 invited lectures, and participated in 130 continuing education courses. He was a faculty at Georgia Tech from 1990 to 2021 and the chair of the international committee TC 102 on in-situ testing from 2000-2013. He served as ISSMGE Vice President for North America from 2014 to 2017. Paul began the series of International Conferences on Site Characterization that were held in Atlanta (1998), Porto (2004); Taiwan (2008); Brazil (2012); Brisbane (2016), and Budapest (2022), and assisted in the five International Symposia on CPT. Dr. Mayne is active in professional associations including ASCE, ASTM, TRB, DFI, ADSC, CGS, USUCGER, and ISSMGE. Paul is married with one daughter and plays bass guitar.

14η Αθηναϊκή Διάλεξη Γεωτεχνικής Μηχανικής
14th Athenian Lecture on Geotechnical Engineering

Geotechnical Site Characterization Using Shear Wave Velocity


Paul W. Mayne
, Geoengineering Consultant, Emeritus Professor- Geosystems Engineering Group,
 School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA USA

A first step in all civil engineering projects is a study of the ground, termed the geotechnical site investigation. While rotary drilling, boring, sampling, and lab testing offer a conventional approach for exploration of soils and rocks, the results are often slow, expensive, and only provide single point measurements. For soil formations, faster and more efficient results can be obtained using in-situ tests, such as the cone penetrometer and flat dilatometer. The measurement of shear wave velocity (Vs) is particularly advantageous since it can be obtained on all geomaterials: clays, silts, sands, mixed soils, gravels, intact and fractured rocks, as well as mine tailings. This presentation provides a brief review of the various in-situ geophysical methods for obtaining Vs profiles (e.g., CHT, DHT, SASW, MASW, ReMi, CSW, PS-logging) available, including direct-push SCPTU and SDMT. The shear wave is more fundamental to geotechnics than its sister, the compression wave, since groundwater, degree of saturation, and attenuation rate significantly affect the measurement of the latter in soil profiles. The shear wave velocity provides the small-strain shear modulus of the ground (Gmax = G0 = ρt · Vs2) which is the fundamental initial stiffness for all stress-strain-strength curves involving soils and rocks under both static and dynamic loading. In geotechnical earthquake engineering, a knowledge of the Vs profile is required for evaluating site amplification and level of ground shaking, and can also be utilized in assessing the liquefaction potential of soils. Additional uses for Vs include correlative relationships with unit weight, liquefaction resistance, preconsolidation stress, and compressive strength.