Seismicity Induced by Excavation Activities

The interest in vibrations phenomena analysis to prevent the risk of damage on civil structures, caused by excavation works for tunneling, quarrying and mining, has always been an issue of great actuality. The above-mentioned risk is estimated by the peak particle velocity (PPV) and the frequency content, but, in several cases, it can be more convenient to measure the peak particle acceleration. As a consequence, the seismicity monitoring is a decisive facet of damage prevention, so it is necessary to use a proper calibrated vibrations measuring chain to get reliable and repeatable results. This paper looks into preliminary results obtained by laboratory tests of a research program carried out to study the influence of different transducer mounting configurations on sensor responses both in time-domain and frequency-domain; in particular the first experimental results show that the choice of seismometer coupling must be driven by the expected dominant frequency.