Elastic wave velocity and attenuation in granular material

Abstract

Discrete Elements Method simulations are carried out to investigate waves propagation in isotropic, frictional granular media. The focus is on the effects of confining pressure, microstructure and input frequency on both wave velocity and attenuation. The latter is described via the seismic quality factor Q and three different measurement approaches are compared, in time and frequency domain. The simulation data validate previous findings on the scaling of wave velocity with confining pressure and coordination number. The quality factor Q shows a non-monotonic behavior with input frequency.