A S-wave phase picking method for blasting seismic waves and its application in engineering

The initial and precise identification of the S-wave phase is a crucial step in the inverse analysis of dynamical mechanical parameters of rock mass. The efficiency and precision in this identification is directly linked with those of the dynamical parameters' inversion. Currently, the S-wave identification focuses mostly on the earthquake science and it is still difficult to effectively identify the S-wave phase on an engineering scale. This paper proposes a method that can be effectively used in engineering. Here, by using the four characteristic functions including the short time average cross zero ratio, the deflection angle, the degree of polarization and the ratio of the transversal to the total energy, this method identified the S-wave phase, without having to go through the filtering processes. Combining the identification result of some data from the blasting field experiments in the Fengning hydro power station with our numerical simulation, we validated this method, showing that its relative error is below 3% and that the method is effective, simple and suitable for the S-wave phase identification on the engineering scale.