Effect of the water-saturated sediment layer on recording seismic signals with a bottom seismometer

Recording seismic signals on the bottom is accompanied by specific distortions caused by resonance phenomena. In the literature, such distortions are explained by the natural vibration of the heavy housing of a seismometer on a soft elastic sediment layer. Meanwhile, there are experimental results that contradict this model. In the present paper, we consider the rheological properties of the bottom sediments, which in fact were not taken into account previously. The model of a viscoplastic medium was used (the Bingham model), and the parameters of the model were experimentally determined. The estimates show that, in the frequency range from 0.003 to 30 Hz used in broadband bottom seismology, the effect of the mass of the seismometer on the results of recording on a soft bottom is negligible. Large errors can be introduced only when a seismometer is placed on rubberlike media such as peat soil, algae aggregations, etc. Resonance phenomena in recording signals on the bottom can occur when seismic waves propagate through a layer of water-saturated sediments. These phenomena are more pronounced for shear waves, whereas the distortions of the longitudinal waves propagating through the water-saturated layer are relatively weak.