Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

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Computers and Geotechnics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compgeo

Research Paper

Differentiation of discrete data with unequal measurement intervals and T

quantification of uncertainty in differentiation using Bayesian compressive
sampling
Tengyuan Zhaoa, Yu Wangb,
⁎

a
School of Human Settlements and Civil Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Shaanxi Province, China
b
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Calculation of derivatives on discrete measurement data with unequal intervals is often required in geotechnical
Compressive sensing engineering, such as interpretation of stiffness reduction curve of soil from pressuremeter test data, pile lateral
Sparse measurements responses from inclinometer data. Such a task is however tricky and challenging, because a small error or noise
Data interpretation in the measurements may amplify and lead to huge fluctuations in the derivatives obtained. The amplification
Bayesian methods
becomes increasingly significant as the order of derivative increases. It is therefore of great importance to
evaluate reliability of the derivatives obtained and quantify the uncertainty associated with the derivative
calculation. A Bayesian compressive sampling-based method is proposed in this paper to address this problem. It
not only provides high-order derivatives on discrete measurement data, even at un-sampled locations, but also
quantifies the uncertainty associated with the derivatives obtained and offers an index to evaluate reliability of
the derivatives obtained. The proposed approach is illustrated using both real-life pressuremeter data and nu-
merical example of pile lateral responses. A comparison is also made between the proposed method and several
existing methods in geotechnical literature. It shows that the proposed method performs better than existing
methods and it is applicable to problems with both elastic and plastic soil responses.

1. Introduction polynomial function, a spline function), followed by differentiation of

In geotechnical engineering practice, measurements of quantities of
interest are often measured in a discrete manner with unequal intervals,
such as load-displacement data, deflection data along piles or drilled
shaft, among others (e.g., [32,48]). Interpretation of the measurements
obtained, however, may involve differentiation of the discrete mea-
surements (e.g., [36,10,31]). For example, in a pressuremeter test, it is
required to differentiate pressure data with respect to cavity strain to
derive stiffness reduction curve of soil (e.g., [10,31,41]). In a pile lat-
eral load test, calculation of derivatives for inclinometer deflection data
may be needed to derive pile lateral response, such as the distribution
of bending moment, shear force and soil resistance along piles (e.g.,
[38,48]).
Calculation of derivatives for discrete data with unequal measure-
ment intervals, however, is tricky and challenging. A number of
methods have been proposed for calculating derivatives of discrete
measurements in literature. A commonly used method is to fit the
discrete measurements with a predetermined function form (e.g., a
the fitted function (e.g., [21,5,29,9,19]). Although the approach is
simple for implementation, the calculated derivatives might be sig-
nificantly affected by the predetermined function form (e.g.,
[31,47,16]). Li et al. [31] developed a digital filter approach to dif-
ferentiate discrete and noisy measurements, which has been used to
interpret secant shear modulus degradation curves from pressuremeter
tests (e.g., [41]). This method does not predetermine the function form
when modelling the discrete measurements, but it is only applicable to
measurements with equal intervals, which are often not available in
geotechnical engineering practice. A weighted residual method (e.g.,
[46,3]) is also used to calculate derivatives of discrete measurements,
but it cannot provide the derivatives at the locations where no mea-
surement data are available. In addition, compressive sampling/sen-
sing, a new sampling strategy in signal processing and image analysis, is
recently adopted to interpret pile lateral response from inclinometer
data, which involves calculation of derivatives of discrete measure-
ments (e.g., [48]).
Note that all the methods mentioned above can only be used to

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: tyzhao@xjtu.edu.cn (T. Zhao), yuwang@cityu.edu.hk (Y. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compgeo.2020.103537
Received 6 August 2019; Received in revised form 12 February 2020; Accepted 8 March 2020
Available online 20 March 2020
0266-352X/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

calculate derivatives of discrete measurements in a deterministic a bold italic symbol denotes a vector from here after.
manner, and the uncertainty associated with the derivatives obtained To obtain the non-trivial elements of ω from y, a relation between
cannot be evaluated or quantified. It is well recognized in literature that them may be established and expressed as
a small error in the discrete measurements may lead to huge errors in y= f = B = A = i = 1 Ai i . A = ΨB is a matrix with a dimen-
N

the calculated derivatives (e.g., [34,45,14]). As a result, the differ-
entiation of discrete measurements might be inaccurate and contain
significant uncertainty. The uncertainty associated with calculated de-
rivatives may further propagate to and affect design or analysis when
the calculated derivatives are used as input for the design or analysis
desired. This underscores the significance in proper differentiation of
discrete data with unequal measurement intervals and quantification of
the associated uncertainty.
This paper aims to address this problem using Bayesian compressive
sampling (BCS) method (e.g., [24,43]), which is a novel method for
image analysis that is capable of not only recovering a complete image
from a remarkably small number of discrete measurements on the
image, but also quantifying the associated uncertainty. Using BCS, a
novel method is proposed in this paper, which not only provides high-
order derivatives on discrete measurement data, even at un-sampled
locations, but also quantifies the uncertainty associated with the deri-
vatives in an objective manner. The uncertainty associated with the
derivatives can be used as an index to evaluate reliability of the high-
order derivatives obtained from discrete measurement data, which can
sion of K × N; Ψ is a matrix with a dimension of K × N, reflecting the
locations of y in f. Using y= A , an approximation of ω, denoted as s ,
can be obtained deterministically (e.g., [13,11,42,12,48] or probabil-
istically (e.g., [24,25;1,20,43,49]. s has the same length with ω, and
its elements are all zero except the S non-trivial ones. Then, f can be
^
approximated as f^ , which is expressed as f = B s .
In this study, s is estimated under a Bayesian framework (e.g.,
[30,44,40,2,28,8]), which is capable of quantifying uncertainty and
dealing with the measurement error in the discrete measurements y. In
the context of BCS, measurement error is modelled as a Gaussian
random variable ε with zero mean and unknown variance. Specifically,
the discrete measurements y is expressed as y= A s + IK , where IK is a
K-length column vector with all elements being one. It has been shown
that s follows a multivariate Student’s t distribution, which has the
mean µ s and covariance matrix COV s (e.g., [43,50]):
µ s
= HAT y= (ATA + D) - 1ATy
dn H dn (ATA + D) - 1
COV s = = (1)
cn 1 cn 1

never be achieved by existing methods (e.g., [48]). In this paper, the

BCS is firstly reviewed and used to reconstruct data of interest with a
high resolution from discrete measurements. Then, the derivative(s) of
interest is (or are) calculated and the uncertainty associated with dif-
ferentiation is quantified properly. A step by step implementation
procedure is also provided. Both real-life and numerical examples are
used to illustrate and validate the proposed approach.
H = (ATA + D)−1; cn = K/2 + c; dn = d+( yT y - µ s T H - 1µ s )/2; c and
d are small non-negative constants (e.g., c = d = 10−4). D is a diagonal
matrix with Di,i = αi (i = 1, 2, …, N), which can be determined by
maximizing the likelihood of y, as detailed in literature (e.g.,
[25,20,43]). Then, the mean and covariance matrix of f^ can be ob-
tained using Eq. (1), f^ = B s, and expressed as (e.g., [26]:

2. Data Reconstruction, Differentiation and Its Uncertainty µ f^ = E (f^ ) = E (B s) = Bµ s

Quantification
In this section, high-resolution data of a quantity of interest is first
reconstructed from discrete measurements with unequal intervals using
BCS (e.g., [20,43]). The reconstructed data are represented analytically
by a weighted summation of a series of basis functions (e.g., cosine
functions). Therefore, derivatives of the reconstructed data, together
with its uncertainty, can be calculated properly, as discussed in the
following two subsections.
2.1. Data reconstruction using Bayesian compressive sampling
Bayesian compressive sampling or sensing (BCS) is a probabilistic
extension of compressive sampling or sensing (CS) that is originated
from the field of signal processing and image analysis after the seminal
work by Candès et al. [7] more than ten years ago. It is capable of
reconstructing a signal, i.e., variations of a quantity with time, space, or
another quantity, from sparse measurements on that signal (e.g.,
[6,24,25]). During the reconstruction, the BCS exploits the “compres-
sibility” nature of signals. “Compressibility” means that a signal, de-
noted as an N-length column vector f, can be represented concisely by a
weighted summation of a limited number of basis functions (e.g., or-
thonormal cosine functions). Mathematically, f is expressed as
f = i = 1 Bi i = B . B is an N × N orthonormal matrix, whose columns
N
COV f^ = E [(f^ µ f^ ) (f^ µ f^ )T] = BCOV s BT (2)
where “E(∙)” means expectation operation; µ f^ represents the mean of
reconstructed f^ , which is denoted as the “best estimate” in this study;
whereas diagonal elements of COV ^ represent the variances of f^ ,
f
which quantify the uncertainty associated with the reconstruction. It is
worthwhile to point out that Eq. (2) not only provides the best estimate
and quantifies the uncertainty associated with f^ , but also paves the way
to quantify the uncertainty associated with the derivatives of f^ , as
discussed in the next subsection.
2.2. Differentiation of discrete measurements and quantification of
uncertainty in differentiation
In this study, discrete cosine transform is used to construct the
matrix B. Columns of B, i.e., Bj (j = 1, 2, …, N), are a series of cosine
functions with different frequencies (e.g., [37]). The larger the j value,
the higher frequency of the cosine function. This property can be uti-
lized to improve the performance of BCS (See [42]). Note that the i-th
element of Bj, i.e., Bi,j (i = 1, 2, …, N) in terms of a coordinate z (e.g.,
depth), is expressed as (e.g., [48]):

Bi (i = 1, 2, …, N) represent a series of basis functions. ωi is the i-th (j 1)(z i z1 ) j 1

element of ω and represents the weight of Bi contributing to f. In the Bi, j = cj cos 2 +
2N 4N (3)
context of CS or BCS, most elements of ω are negligible except several
(e.g., S≪N) non-trivial ones that have significantly large magnitude. where cj = 1/ N for j = 1 and cj =2/ N for j ≠ 1. z1 and zi are z
Therefore, f can be reconstructed if the non-trivial elements of ω are
coordinates, corresponding to the first and the i-th element of f^ , re-
identified and estimated using the sparse and discrete measurements on
spectively. η represents a resolution that an engineer would like to have
f. The discrete measurements are denoted as a K-length column vector
in the reconstructed data f^ . Using f^ = B = and Eq. (3),
N
B
y= [y (z1), y (z2), , y (zK )]T , where z represents the spatial coordinate s j=1 j sj

(e.g., depth) and the superscript “T” represents transpose operation in the i-th element of f^ , i.e., fi (i = 1, 2, …, N), can be expressed ana-
linear algebra. Note that a bold upright symbol denotes a matrix, while lytically as:

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T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

N N
(j 1)(z i z1 ) j 1 COV s , which remains unchanged with the increase of n. Bi(,nl ) and Bi(,nm)
fi = Bi, j = sj cj cos 2 +
sj
2N 4N represent elements of B(n) . Therefore, when the magnitude of elements
j=1 j=1 (4) (n )
of B(n) increases with n, the variance of f^ , i.e., Eq. (10), also in-
sj in Eq. (4) is the j-th element of s. Because Eq. (4) is an analytical creases. This indicates that, as n increases, the uncertainty in the deri-
and explicit function of zi, differentiation of fi with respect to zi can be (n ) (n )
vatives f^ increases, and f^ becomes less reliable. This observation is
performed analytically. Consider, for example, the first order derivative consistent with common sense and results reported in literature (e.g.,
of fi with respect to zi. It is expressed as: [39]). The derivations in this subsection not only provide mathematical
dfi
N
dBi, j N
(j 1) (j 1)(z i z1 ) j 1 proof to support the observation, but also offer a rational way to
= = s j cj sin 2 +
quantify the increase of uncertainty as the order of derivative increases.
sj
dz i
j =1
dz i
j=1
N 2N 4N
(5)
Eq. (5) suggests that the first order derivative of fi with respect to zi is
3. Implementation procedure
equal to the weighted summation of the first order derivative of all
elements of the i-th row of B (denoted as Bir) with respect to zi, which is
In this section, the proposed method is summarized as a six-step
denoted as an N-length row vector Bir(1) (i = 1, 2, …, N). The j-th ele-
dBi, j implementation procedure. Each step and the key equations involved
ment of Bir(1) is expressed as Bi(1)
, j = dz i . The superscript “(1)” represents are detailed as below:
the first order derivative. Note that Eq. (5) can be rewritten in a more
concise form as: Step 1: Obtain the discrete measurements as
y= [y (z1), y (z2), , y (zK )]T and the range that z covers, e.g., h = zK-
df^i
= Bir(1) s z1. Determine a resolution η that an engineer would like to have in
dz i (6) the reconstructed data. Calculate N as N = h/η + 1;
The first order derivative of all elements of f^ with respect to z, i.e., Step 2: Decompose the discrete measurements y into two compo-
(1) nents: a linear component yL and a nonlinear component yNL, i.e.,
f^ , can be obtained using Eq. (6), and they are expressed in a matrix
y = yL + yNL;
form as:
Step 3: Calculate the function for the linear component using the
^
B1(1)
r
first and last data points of y as fL = a z+ b . The coefficients “a”
(1) B2(1) and “b” are calculated as a = [y (zK ) y (z1)]/(z k z1) and
f^ = r
s = B(1) s b = y (z1) az k , respectively. z is a vector representing z1, z2, …,
(1) with a resolution of η;
BNr (7) Step 4: Convert the nonlinear component yNL into a periodic data
where is the i-th (i = 1, 2, …, N) row of matrix B , which is the
Bir(1) (1) set by alternatively cloning itself and its folded and inverted copies
first order derivative of matrix B with respect to z. Following a similar for multiple (e.g., NT = 20) times. This technique has been used in
procedure, the n-th order derivatives of f^ with respect to z, denoted as literature to improve the performance of the proposed method when
(n ) calculating the derivatives at the boundaries (e.g., [31,41,48]);
f^ , is derived as: Step 5: Take the periodic data set as input for the BCS approach.
(n ) Both the best estimate and quantified uncertainty of the nonlinear
f^ = B(n) s (8)
component with a high resolution are obtained using Eqs. (2). Note
where B(n) represents the n-th order derivative of B with respect to z. that the reconstructed f^NL with a high resolution is represented
The element at the i-th row and the j-th column of B(n) is expressed as analytically by a weighted summation of cosine functions;
dnBi, j
Bi(,nj ) = dzin
. Step 6: Obtain the reconstructed data with a high resolution as a
(n ) summation of two components as f^ = f^L + f^NL . Calculate the n-th
Once Eq. (8) is obtained, the mean and covariance matrix of f^ can
dnf^ dnf^L dnf^NL
be derived in a manner similar to Eq. (2): order derivative with respect to z using dz n
= dz n
+ dz n
. The mean
dnf^
^ (n) and quantified uncertainty associated with can be obtained
µ ^(n) = E (f ) = E (B(n) s) = B (n ) µ s
dz n
f
dnf^L
(n ) (n ) using Eq. (9) when n > 1. Note that the first term in the right-
COV ^ (n) = E [(f^ µ ^(n) ) (f^ ) ]=
µ ^(n) T B(n) COV [B(n) ]T dz n
f f f
s
(9) hand side of
dnf^ dnf^L dnf^NL
= dz n + dz n disappears when n > 1 because
dz n
where µ ^ (n)
(n )
represents the mean of f^ , i.e., the best estimate of the n- high-order derivatives of a linear term are zero. When n = 1,
f df^L
= aIN is a constant, where IN is an N-length column vector with
th order derivative of f^ with respect to z; whereas diagonal elements of dz
all elements being one.
(n )
COV (n) represent the variance associated with f^ , quantifying the
f^
(n ) 4. Illustrative Example I: Pressuremeter data involving first-order
uncertainty associated with the n-th order derivative f^ . It is worth-
derivative
while to point out that as n increases, the magnitude of elements of B(n) ,
dnBi, j
i.e., Bi(,nj ) = dzin
may increase too because it contains a factor of In this section, the proposed method and the implementation pro-
( (j
N
1) n
) due to repeated differentiation of fi . Note that each element cedure are illustrated using a set of real pressuremeter test data, i.e.,
cavity strain (εc) vs pressure (P) data pairs, from Prust et al. [35], as
(n )
of B(n) is explicitly involved in the estimated variance of f^ , i.e., the shown in Fig. 1 by open circles. The pressuremeter test was carried out
diagonal elements of COV ^(n) , which is derived as Eq. (10) from Eq. (9): in a site in Thailand. The site is comprised of a top layer of a made
f
N N ground extending from the ground surface to a depth of around
2
(n) = Bi(,nl ) Bi(,nm) COV sl,m 0.1–4 m, a Bangkok soft clay layer which extends to a depth of around
f^i l=1 m=1 (10) 12.9–17.9 m, a first stiff clay layer which further extends to a depth of
(n ) around 20.4–29.3 m, underlain by a Bangkok aquifer layer which
where 2 is the estimated variance for the i-th element of f^ ;
fi
( n)
mainly contains sand. In this study, the data in Fig. 1 are from a
COV sl, m is the element at the l-th row and the m-th column of the matrix pressuremeter test in sands within the Bangkok aquifer layer.

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T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

1200 that, convert the nonlinear component into a periodic signal by alter-
natively rotating itself and its folded and inverted copies along log10(εr)
axis for multiple (e.g., NT = 20) times (Step 4). The periodic data are
1000
then taken as input to BCS. Subsequently, the periodic data of the
nonlinear component f^NL with a high resolution are obtained and the
800 uncertainty in terms of two times standard deviation (SD) is calculated
Pressure, P (kPa)

(Step 5). Using the best estimate of f^NL and 2 SD associated with f^NL ,
600 the upper and lower bounds of f^ can be calculated as µ ± 2
NL fi fi
(i = 1, 2, …, N), where µ fi and fi are the i-th element of µ f^ and the
square root of the i-th diagonal element of COV f^ . Then, adding the
400
linear function with f^ = 3.7841log ( ) + 19.0149 back to the non-
L 10 r
linear component reconstructed leads to the best estimate (P, εr) data
200 curve with a high resolution and the upper and lower bounds of the (P,
εr) curve, as shown in Fig. 3a by a dashed and a pair of two dotted lines.
0 For comparison, Fig. 3a also includes the original (P, εr) data pairs by
0 2 4 6 8 10 open circles. It is evident in Fig. 3a that the dashed line is very con-
Cavity strain, c
(%) sistent with the open circles, indicating the (P, εr) data curve re-
constructed by BCS is reasonable. In addition, the lower and upper
Fig. 1. Pressuremeter test result from Bangkok, Thailand (after [35]). bounds in Fig. 3a are almost overlapped with the dashed line, in-
dicating that the reconstructed (P, εr) curve is reliable and confident
As the final unloading portion of a pressuremeter test is generally (e.g., [50]). Following Step 6 in Section 3, dP/log10(εr) is calculated as:
considered as relatively reliable (e.g., [36,41]), it is used in this study to
derive the secant shear modulus Gsec (e.g., [10]): dP df^L df^NL df^NL
= + = 3.7841 +
d (log10 r ) d (log10 r ) d (log10 r ) d (log10 r ) (13)
1 dP
Gsec = (1 + curr )
2 d curr (11) Then, the best estimate and SD of dP / d (log10 r ) are expressed as two
column vectors, i.e., µdP / d (log10 r ) = 3.7841 + B(1) µ s and
where curr = 1c + max is the current cavity strain and εmax is the max-
dP / d (log10 r ) = diag ( B COV s [B ] ) , respectively, using Eqs. (9) and
max (1) (1) T
imum cavity strain for the unloading portion of a pressuremeter test. As
(13). “diag(∙)” represents the diagonal elements of a matrix. Although
shown in Eq. (11), derivation of Gsec requires the differentiation of
both the mean and SD of dP / d (log10 r ) are obtained, dP/dεr is unknown
pressure P with respect to the current cavity strain εcurr. The P vs εcurr
but required in Eq. (12). Therefore, it is necessary to relate
data pairs of the unloading portion in Fig. 1 can be calculated readily
dP / d (log10 r ) to dP/dεr (e.g., [31]):
using curr = 1c + max . Note that P vs εcurr data pairs are preferably pre-
max
sented in a logarithm scale (e.g., [10,31]). Because the εcurr data are dP
=
1 dP
=
1 dP
negative during unloading, εcurr data are transformed into positive ra- dr r ln(10) d (log10 r ) 2.3026 r d (log10 r ) (14)
dial strain εr by setting εr = −εcurr. Fig. 2a plots the P vs εr data pairs by
Substituting the mean and SD of dP / d (log10 r ) obtained into Eq.
open circles in a logarithm scale. Eq. (11) is then rewritten as:
(14) leads to the mean and SD of dP/dεr as:
1 dP
Gsec = ( r 1) µdP / d r =
1
( 3.7841 + B(1) µ s )
2 dr (12) 2.3026 r
1
=
In such a case, the discrete measurements with unequal measure- dP / d r 2.3026 r dP / d (log10 r ) (15)
ment intervals are obtained (see open circles in Fig. 2a). Then, de-
The best estimate of dP/dεr (e.g., µdP / d r ) is shown in Fig. 3b by a
termine a resolution η (in a logarithm scale) in the reconstructed data
dashed line. Similarly, and µdP / d r ± 2 dP / d r are shown in Fig. 3b by a
such as η = 0.01 and calculate the range h that log10(εr) spans as pair of dotted lines. Then, using Eqs. (15) and (12), the best estimate
h = [log10(εr)]max-[log10(εr)]min = 2.06. Compute the length N as and SD of secant shear modulus Gsec are derived as:
N = h/ η + 1 = 207 (Step 1). In this example, z represents log10(εr).
1
Then, decompose the discrete measurements as a combination of linear µ Gsec = 2 ( r 1) µdP / d r
component yL and a nonlinear component yNL as shown in Fig. 2b and 1
Gsec = (
2 r
1) dP / d r (16)
c, respectively (Step 2). The function of the linear component is cal-
culated as f^L = alog10 ( r ) + b , where “a = -3.7841” and “b = 19.0149” Using Eq. (16), µ Gsec and µ Gsec ± 2 Gsec are computed and shown in
are obtained using the equations in Step 2 in Section 3 (Step 3). After Fig. 3c using the same legends as those in Fig. 3a and b. Note that the

1400 1400 400

(a) Original measurement (b) Linear component of y, (c) Nonlinear component
1200 data y 1200 i.e., yL of y, i.e., yNL
300
Pressure, P (kPa)

1000 1000
800 800
600 =600 + 200
400 400 100
200 200
0 0 0
0.01 0.1 1 10 0.01 0.1 1 10 0.01 0.1 1 10
Radial strain, r (%) Radial strain, r (%) Radial strain, r (%)

Fig. 2. Decomposition of discrete pressuremeter data y with unequal measurement intervals.

4
T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

1200 0
Transformed-strain

Secant shear modulus Gs (MPa)

(a) (b) (c)
150 approach (Jardine [36])
1000
The proposed method

Pressure, P (kPa)
800 -60 Best estimate
100 Best estimate 2SD
600

r
dP/d
400 -120 50
Measurements y Best estimate
200 Best estimate Best estimate
Best estimate 2SD 2SD
0 -180 0
0.01 0.1 1 10 0.01 0.1 1 10 0.01 0.1 1 10
Radial strain, r (%) Radial strain, r (%) Shear strain, (%)

Fig. 3. (a) Reconstructed pressuremeter data; (b) derivatives and (c) secant shear modulus.

shear strain γ in Fig. 3c is approximately two times of the radial strain,
i.e., γ ≈ 2εr (e.g., [41]). Fig. 3c shows that as the shear strain γ in-
creases, the secant shear modulus Gsec gradually decreases. Further-
more, when γ is relatively small, the uncertainty in the Gsec interpreted
by the proposed method is relatively large, and vice versa. This may be
attributed to the fact that, when γ is small, the pressuremeter data are
affected more significantly by measurement errors, and hence, less re-
liable. These observations are consistent with what have been reported
in literature (e.g., [17,23,36]). In addition, Fig. 3c also shows the Gsec
obtained from the transformed-strain approach [23] by a solid line with
open triangles. The dashed line from the proposed method is very
consistent with the solid line with open triangles, indicating that the
best estimated Gsec curve from the proposed method is reasonable.
is elastoplastic, which is reflected by the p-y curve shown in Fig. 4c.
Fig. 4c plots the p-y curves at depths of 0.5 m, 1.0 m and 3.0 m, re-
spectively, by solid, dashed and dotted lines. Fig. 4c shows that the soil-
pile system tends to be elastic when deflections are less than 1 mm. In
this example, the deflections at the depth of 0.5 m, 1.0 m and 3.0 m are
around 19.0 mm, 13.8 mm and 5.2 mm, respectively, which are much
larger than the elastic threshold of 1 mm, as shown in Fig. 5a. For the
pipe pile at the depths less than z = 0.5 m, the soil-pile system exists
high levels of plasticity.
Generally speaking, once the underlying deflection measurements f
(z) and the flexural rigidity EI of the pile are available, the pile lateral
responses, i.e., distribution of M, V and p along piles can be mathe-
matically expressed as below in accordance with beam theory (e.g.,
[18,33]):

5. Illustrative Example II: Pile lateral response data involving high d 2f (z )

M = EI
order derivatives dz 2 (17a)

Note that Section 4 only explores the first order derivative of dis- d3f (z ) dM
V = EI =
crete measurements, while the proposed method is applicable to high dz 3 dz (17b)
order differentiation. In this section, this point is systematically in-
vestigated using a pile example from LPILE package [15]. The pile d 4 f (z ) dV
p = EI =
lateral responses, including distribution of bending moment (M), shear dz 4 dz (17c)
force (V), and soil resistance (p), are interpreted from deflection mea-
surements. This involves calculation of a second, third and fourth order z in this example is used to represent the depth coordinate along piles.
derivatives with respect to depth, respectively. In this example, the pile In this example, the complete f(z) along depth is unknown and needs to
is installed within a sand layer, which has a thickness of around be reconstructed from the K = 11 discrete measurements on f(z), i.e.,
10.67 m, as shown in Fig. 4a. The layer has a friction angle of the open circles in Fig. 5a. Specify a resolution η in the reconstructed f
ϕ′silt = 38°, and effective unit weight of γsilt = 17.28 kN/m3. The pile (z) data such as η = 0.09144 m and calculate the range h that an in-
used in this example is a pipe pile which has a length of 9.144 m, an clinometer records as h = zmax-zmin = 9.144 m. Compute the length N
outside diameter of 406.4 mm, a wall thickness of 12.7 mm (see as N = h/ η + 1 = 101 (Step 1). Decompose the discrete inclinometer
Fig. 4b), an elastic modulus of around E = 199.95 GPa, and an area data y (i.e., the open circles in Fig. 5a) into two components: a linear
moment of inertia of I = 3.05 × 10−4 m4. Note that although a con- component yL and a nonlinear component yNL (Step 2). Calculate the
stant EI = E × I = 60.92 N·m2 is used in this example, the method is function for the linear component using the first and last data points of
^
equally applicable to incorporate non-elastic modulus, which may be y as fL = a z+ b = -2.7650 z + 25.28 (Step 3). Convert the nonlinear
obtained through the methods given in literature (e.g., [51,52]). Given component yNL into a periodic dataset by alternatively cloning itself
the above conditions, some specified loads, such as a lateral shear load and its folded and inverted copies for multiple (e.g., NT = 20) times
of Q = 200.0 kN and an axial load of 133.45 kN at the pile head as (Step 4). Then, the periodic data are taken as input to the BCS method
shown in Fig. 4a, and built-in p-y criterions in LPILE package, dis- and the nonlinear component of the inclinometer data with a high re-
tribution of deflection, shear force and soil resistance along the pile solution, i.e., f^NL is obtained probabilistically, such as a best estimate
with an equal interval of 9.144 cm are obtained from the LPILE and ± 2SD (Step 5), as shown in Fig. 5a by a dashed line and two
package, as shown in Fig. 5a, 5b, 5c and 5d, respectively by a solid line. dotted lines, respectively. It is evident from Fig. 5a that both the dashed
In this example, K = 11 deflection data (i.e., the open circles in Fig. 5a) line and the dotted lines are almost overlapped with the solid line and
are taken as discrete data measured from inclinometer. They are used open circles, indicating that the deflection data reconstructed by BCS is
together with EI of the steel pipe pile as input to the proposed method reasonable, realistic and confident. Then, calculate the 2nd, 3rd and 4th
for interpretation of the pile lateral responses (i.e., distribution of M, V, order derivative of f^ = f^L + f^NL with respect to depth z using
and p along the pile). Note that the pile lateral responses from LIPILE dnf^ dnf^L dnf^NL dnf^NL dnf^
= + (n = 2, 3, and 4). Note that the term nL
=
are only used for comparison and validation of the results from the dz n dz n dz n dz n
dz
proposed method. In addition, the soil-pile interaction in this example disappears for the linear function f^L = a z+ b when n ≥ 2 (Step 6).

5
T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

(a) loads and configuration of the pipe pile (b) section of the steel pipe pile
300
p-y curves at depths z
z = 0.5m
z = 1.0m
Soil resistance, p(kN/m)

z = 2.0m
200

100

0
0.000 0.005 0.010 0.015 0.020
Deflection y (m)
(c) Non-elastic p-y relationships at several depths
Fig. 4. A pipe pile example from LIPLE package (after [15]).

Deflection (mm) Bending moment (kN m) Shear force (kN) Soil resistance (kN/m)
-10 0 10 20 30 0 100 200 300 -200 0 200 -400 -200 0 200 400
0
(a) (b) (c) (d)
2

4
Depth, z(m)

Deflection data
10 from LPILE
Sparse deflection Bending moment Shear force from Soil resistance from
data y from LPILE LPILE LPILE
12 Best estimate Best estimate Best estimate shear Best estimate soil
deflection data bending moment force resistance
Best estimate SD Best estimate SD Best estimate SD Best estimate SD
14
Fig. 5. Interpretation of pile lateral response from discrete inclinometer data.

6
T. Zhao and Y. Wang
Since f^NL is obtained probabilistically, NL
dnf^
can also be evaluated sta-
dz n
tistically with mean and covariance matrix shown in Eq. (9). The mean
and covariance of bending moment M, V and p are then obtained as
µM = EIµ ^(2) and COVM = EI COV ^ (2) , µ V = EIµ ^ (3) and
f f f pared with those from the proposed method. Note that the same de-
COVV = EI COV ^(3) , and µp = EIµ ^ (4) and COVp = EI COV ^(4) , respec-
f f f flection data as those in Section 5 (i.e., the open circles in Fig. 5a) are
tively. μM, μV and μp represent the best estimate of pile responses M, V
and p; diagonal elements of COVM, COVV, and COVp represent the
quantified variance for M, V and p, respectively, from which the SD is
obtained. Fig. 5b, 5c and 5d summarize the best estimate and un-
certainty associated with M, V and p using the same legends as those in
Fig. 5a. The dashed lines in all subplots of Fig. 5 are generally consistent
with the corresponding solid lines, and most variations of the solid lines
fall within the corresponding regions defined by best estimate ± 2SD,
although there are slight differences between the dashed and solid lines
in Fig. 5c and 5d. Note that a third and fourth order (i.e., high-order)
derivatives of deflection data with respect to depth are calculated when
computing the distribution of shear force in Fig. 5c and soil resistance
in Fig. 5d, respectively (see Eqs. (17b and c)). As discussed under the
Section 2.2, uncertainty in the derivative results increases as order of
the derivative increases. This point is further supported by the SD as-
sociated with the second, third and fourth order derivatives of re-
constructed data with respect to depth, as shown in Fig. 6 by a dotted,
solid, and dash-dotted lines, respectively. Fig. 6 also includes the SD
associated with the reconstructed data by a dashed line, where no
differentiation is involved. Fig. 6 shows that, as the order of derivative
(i.e., n) increases, the corresponding SD also increases. This implies that
the differentiation obtained from the proposed method becomes less
accurate and reliable as the order of derivative increases, as explained
in the Section 2.2. The proposed method not only provides a rational
and proper way for calculating high order derivatives of discrete data
with unequal measurement intervals, but also provides a quantitative
index on the reliability of the differentiation results obtained. This is
different from Zhao and Wang [48], where differentiation of discrete
data can only be obtained deterministically.
6. Comparison with existing methods
As mentioned in Section 1, a commonly used method in literature to
interpret the inclinometer data is to fit the discrete deflection mea-
surements first with a predetermined function form, followed by dif-
ferentiation of the fitted function with respect to depth to obtain the
Standard deviation (SD)
0.0 0.5 1.0
0
2 pretation of M, V and p. The proposed method therefore is more ac-
4
Depth, z(m)
6 uncertainty cannot be quantified by either the polynomials, spline or
8 7. Effect of number of measurements and measurement error
10
SD of the n-th derivative
12 n=0 n=2
n=3 n=4
14
Fig. 6. Evolution of the quantified uncertainty associated with the derivatives
in pile lateral response interpretation.
7
Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537
pile lateral responses (i.e., M, V and p). In this section, predetermined
function forms, such as polynomials, splines and cosine-exponential
combined model are used to fit deflection data and interpret pile lateral
responses (i.e., M, V and p). The results from these methods are com-
used for all methods to ensure a fair comparison.
For the polynomial method, the measured deflection data are used
to fit the function f(z) = a0 + a1z + a2z2+…+ aqzq (q is a positive
integer). In this study, q is taken as q = 7 as it is often recommended in
literature when using the polynomial for differentiation (e.g., [22], and
the coefficients ai (i = 0, 1, 2, …, 7) are obtained through a least-square
method. With the data shown in Fig. 5a (i.e., the open circles), it is
obtained that f(z) = 25.28–11.20z-1.58z2 + 1.69z3-0.37z4 + 0.035z5-
1.4 × 10−3z6 + 1.6 × 10−5z7. For the spline method, the measured
deflection data are used for fitting piecewise polynomials in a format f
(z) = a0 + a1(z-zi) + a2(z-zi)2 + a3(z-zi)3 + a4(z-zi)4, where
zi ≤ z ≤ zi+1. zi and zi+1 are the depths in an ascending order corre-
sponding to measured deflection data. Using the algorithm by Jonas
[27], the coefficients for the piecewise polynomials are obtained, as
summarized in Table 1. For the cosine-exponential model, the measured
deflection data are used for fitting the function
f (z ) = a exp( z / b)cos(z / b) (e.g., [4]). The parameters “a” and “b” are
obtained as a = 25.18 and b = 2.04 through a least square method.
The three fitted functions f(z) for polynomial, spline and cosine-ex-
ponential methods are shown in Fig. 7a by a dotted line with diamonds,
crosses, and open squares, respectively. Fig. 7a also includes the ori-
ginal deflection data from LPILE by a bold solid line. It shows that the
dotted lines with open diamonds, crosses and open squares are very
consistent with the solid line. This suggests that all the above methods
provide a reasonable and realistic fitting to the measured deflection
data. Then, bending moment M, shear force V and soil resistance p are
calculated using Eq. (17) together with these three functions f(z), as
shown in Fig. 7b, 7c and 7d, respectively, by the same legends as those
in Fig. 7a. Fig. 7b–d also include M, V and p from LPILE by a bold solid
line. It is seen from Fig. 7b to 7d that there are large discrepancies
between the dotted lines with open squares, crosses and open squares
and the bold solid lines. Moreover, Fig. 7 shows that as the order of
differentiation increases, the discrepancies increase due to the ampli-
fication of error during differentiation. These results indicate that M, V
and p interpreted from the polynomial, spline and cosine-exponential
method may be unrealistic although all the three methods provide a
reasonable fitting to the measured deflection data.
In contrast, the results from the proposed method (i.e., the dashed
line in Fig. 7) are in good agreement with those from the LPILE (i.e., the
bold solid line), indicating that the proposed method not only provides
a reasonable fitting to the deflection data but also a realistic inter-
curate and robust than the existing methods. In addition, note that the
proposed method also quantifies the uncertainty associated with cal-
culation of the high-order derivatives (see Figs. 5 and 6) and offers an
index to evaluate reliability of the derivatives obtained. In contrast, the
cosine-exponential methods.
In this section, the effect of number of measurements and mea-
surement errors on the performance of the proposed method are ana-
lyzed, which are discussed in detail in the following two subsections.
7.1. Effect of number of measurements
In this subsection, different number of measurements scenarios, e.g.,
K = 20, 30, 40 together with the K = 11 scenario explored in Section 5
are utilized to explore the effect of number of measurements on the
T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

Table 1
Summary of piecewise polynomials coefficients for a 4th order spline method.
Depth z (m) Coefficients for polynomials “a0 + a1(z − zi) + a2(z − zi)2 + a3(z − zi)3 + a4(z − zi)4″

a0 a1 a2 a3 a4

0.0000 ≤ z ≤ 0.9144 25.2800 −6.0961 −14.5730 12.6554 −3.4032

0.9144 ≤ z ≤ 1.8288 13.8000 −10.8544 2.9565 −1.0364 0.3889
1.8288 ≤ z ≤ 2.7432 6.4700 −7.2269 1.9780 0.2438 −0.1480
2.7432 ≤ z ≤ 3.5662 1.9300 −3.8057 1.9785 −0.2433 −0.0451
3.5662 ≤ z ≤ 4.4806 −0.1900 −0.7477 0.9707 −0.4247 0.0726
4.4806 ≤ z ≤ 5.4864 −0.3360 0.1843 0.1700 −0.1591 0.0370
5.4864 ≤ z ≤ 6.4008 −0.1210 0.2096 −0.0805 −0.0236 0.0160
6.4008 ≤ z ≤ 7.3152 0.0007 0.0411 −0.0548 0.0406 −0.0140
7.3152 ≤ z ≤ 8.3210 0.0137 0.0023 −0.0114 −0.0055 0.0050
8.3210 ≤ z ≤ 9.1440 0.0041 −0.0168 0.0025 0.0147 −0.0074

Deflection (mm) Bending moment (kN m) Shear force (kN) Soil resistance (kN/m)
-10 0 10 20 30-100 0 100 200 300 400 -200 0 200 -400 -200 0 200 400
0
(a ) (b) (c ) (d)

4
Depth, z(m)

10
Sparse deflection data y Original data (i.e., deflection, bending moment, shear force and soil resistance) from LPILE
Fitted deflection function and pile lateral responses interpreted from different methods
The proposed method Polynomical method with an order of seven
Spline method with an order of four Cosine-exponential method

Fig. 7. Comparison of pile lateral responses from the proposed method and that from polynomial, spline and cosine-exponential method.

Deflection (mm) Deflection (mm) Deflection (mm) Deflection (mm)

-10 0 10 20 30 -10 0 10 20 30 -10 0 10 20 30 -10 0 10 20 30
0
(a) K = 11 (b) K = 20 (c) K = 30 (d) K = 40

4
Depth, z(m)

10
Deflection data Deflection data Deflection data Deflection data
12 from LPILE from LPILE from LPILE from LPILE
Sparse deflection Sparse deflection Sparse deflection Sparse deflection
data y data y data y data y
14
Fig. 8. Different number of discrete deflection data points.

8
T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

Deflection (mm) Bending moment (kN m) Shear force (kN) Soil resistance (kN/m)
-10 0 10 20 30 -100 0 100 200 300 400 -200-100 0 100 200 300 -400 -200 0 200 400
0
(a) (b) (c) (d)

4
Depth, z(m)

10 Deflection data Bending moment Shear force from Soil resistance from
from LPILE from LPILE LPILE LPILE
Best estimate under Best estimate under Best estimate under Best estimate under
12 different K scenarios
different K scenarios different K scenarios different K scenarios
K = 11 K = 20 K = 11 K = 20 K = 11 K = 20 K = 11 K = 20
K = 30 K = 40 K = 30 K = 40 K = 30 K = 40 K = 30 K = 40
14
Fig. 9. Best estimate of pile lateral responses derived by the proposed method under different number of measurements.

SD (mm) SD (kN m) SD (kN) SD (kN/m)

0.00 0.02 0.04 0 2 4 6 0 5 10 15 20 0 20 40 60 80
0
(a) (b) (c) (d)

4
Depth, z(m)

10
Quantified SD under Quantified SD under Quantified SD under Quantified SD under
different K scenarios different K scenarios different K scenarios different K scenarios
12
K = 11 K = 20 K = 11 K = 20 K = 11 K = 20 K = 11 K = 20
K = 30 K = 40 K = 30 K = 40 K = 30 K = 40 K = 30 K = 40
14
Fig. 10. Standard deviation of pile lateral responses quantified by the proposed method under different number of measurements: (a) for deflection data; (b) for
bending moment; (c) for shear force and (d) for soil resistance.

proposed method. The four measurements K scenarios, i.e., K = 11, 20,
30, and 40, are shown as open circles in Fig. 8a to 8d, respectively. Each
subplot in Fig. 8 also includes the complete deflection profile from
LPILE by a solid line. Then, following the procedure illustrated in the
Section 5, the best estimate of reconstructed data, distribution of M, V
and p are obtained, as shown in Fig. 9a–d. In each subplot of Fig. 9, the
results corresponding to K = 11, 20, 30, and 40 scenarios are re-
presented by a solid line with open circles, crosses, open diamonds and
open stars, respectively. Fig. 9 shows that all lines are generally con-
sistent with the solid line in each subplot, suggesting that the best es-
timate of reconstructed data, distribution of M, V and p are reasonable
and realistic even when K is relatively small. In addition, the un-
certainties (in terms of SD) of reconstructed data, distribution of M, V
and p, are greatly influenced by the number of measurements K, as
shown in Fig. 10a–d, respectively. The legends used in Fig. 10 are the
same as those in Fig. 9. Fig. 10 shows that as K increases, the SD over
depth in each subplot becomes increasingly small, which implies that
the results obtained become increasingly reliable and confident. This is
reasonable because more information is adopted in the reconstruction
and differentiation, and the associated uncertainty is effectively re-
duced as K increases (e.g., [43,50]).
7.2. Effect of measurement error
In this subsection, the performance of the proposed method is ex-
amined when the discrete measurements contain noise. Two types of
noises are added to the sparsely measured deflection data: (1) Gaussian
white noise; and (2) uniform white noise. In this example, a peak-to-
peak noise amplitude of 1% of the maximum deflection in Fig. 5a is
added. The deflection data with the Gaussian and uniform white noises
are shown in Fig. 11a and 11b, respectively, where the open circles
represent the discrete deflection data with noises.
Then, using the discrete measurements with noises in Fig. 11a and
11b as input to the proposed method, the pile lateral responses are

9
T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

Deflection (mm) Deflection (mm) in Fig. 13, which utilizes the discrete and noisy measurements in
-10 0 10 20 30 -10 0 10 20 30
0 0 Fig. 11b. All these agreements indicate that: (1) the proposed method is
(a) (b) robust and accurate in reconstruction and differentiation, and (2) the
pile lateral responses interpreted are reasonable.
2 2

4 4
6 6
Depth, z(m)
8. Conclusion
This paper proposes a Bayesian compressive sampling (BCS) based
approach to probabilistically calculate high order derivatives on dis-
crete data with unequal measurement intervals. The proposed method

Depth (m)
8 8
10 10
Deflection data from
12 12
LPILE with Gaussian noise
Sparse deflection data y
14 14
Fig. 11. Deflection measurement data with (a) Gaussian white noise and (b)
uniform white noise.
obtained for each of the two cases. The results corresponding to the
noisy measurements in Fig. 11a and 11b are summarized in Figs. 12 and
13, respectively, using the same symbols as those in Fig. 5. It is evident
in Figs. 12 and 13 that both the reconstructed deflection data and the
pile lateral responses interpreted by the proposed method are in good
agreement with those from LIPILE. Consider, for example, Fig. 12,
which corresponds to the noisy measurements in Fig. 11a. Fig. 12a
shows that the dashed and two dotted lines are very consistent with the
bold solid line. This indicates that the BCS approach is robust and
confident in data reconstruction (e.g., [43]). More importantly, the pile
lateral responses interpreted by the proposed method, which involves
differentiation of reconstructed data, are very consistent with those
from LPILE, as shown in Fig. 12b–d. Similar observations are observed
not only provides high-order derivatives with a high resolution, but also
quantifies uncertainty associated with the derivatives obtained. It
showed that the uncertainty of the differentiation increases as the order
of derivatives increases, implying decreasing reliability in high order
derivatives on discrete data. This is consistent with the observation that
a small error in the measurements may lead to huge fluctuations in high
order derivatives obtained. The quantified uncertainty may be used as
an indicator to judge the quality and reliability of the derivatives cal-
Deflection data from
culated from the discrete measurements.
LPILE with uniform noise
Sparse deflection data y Both real-life pressuremeter data and numerical example of pile
lateral responses were adopted to illustrate and validate the proposed
method. The results showed that the proposed method is capable of
providing an accurate reconstruction of the quantity of interest, as well
as reasonable high order derivatives with a high resolution from sparse
measurements with unequal intervals, even when data contain mea-
surement error. In addition, a comparison was made between the pro-
posed method and several existing methods (e.g., polynomials, spline
and cosine-exponential method). The results showed that the proposed
method is more robust and accurate than the existing methods and it is
applicable to problems with both elastic and plastic soil responses.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Tengyuan Zhao: Software, Validation, Formal analysis,
Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review &
editing. Yu Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation,
Resources, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing,
Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

Deflection (mm) Bending moment (kN m) Shear force (kN) Soil resistance (kN/m)
-10 0 10 20 30 -100 0 100 200 300 400 -200 -100 0 100 200 -400 -200 0 200 400
0
(a) (b) (c) (d)
2

4
Depth, z(m)

Deflection data
10 from LPILE Bending moment Soil resistance
Shear force from
Sparse deflection from LPILE LPILE from LPILE
data y Best estimate Best estimate shear Best estimate soil
12
Best estimate bending moment force resistance
deflection data Best estimate 2SD Best estimate 2SD Best estimate 2SD
14 Best estimate 2SD

Fig. 12. Pile lateral response interpreted from discrete inclinometer data with Gaussian white noise.

10
T. Zhao and Y. Wang Computers and Geotechnics 122 (2020) 103537

Deflection (mm) Bending moment (kN m) Shear force (kN) Soil resistance (kN/m)
-10 0 10 20 30 -100 0 100 200 300 400 -200 -100 0 100 200 -400 -200 0 200 400
0
(a) (b) (c) (d)
2

4
Depth, z(m)

Deflection data
10 from LPILE Bending moment Soil resistance
Shear force from
Sparse deflection from LPILE LPILE from LPILE
data y Best estimate Best estimate shear Best estimate soil
12
Best estimate bending moment force resistance
deflection data Best estimate 2SD Best estimate 2SD Best estimate 2SD
14 Best estimate 2SD

Fig. 13. Pile lateral response interpreted from discrete inclinometer data with uniform white noise.

Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The work described in this paper was supported by grants from the
Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region, China (project no. 9042516 (CityU 11213117) and project no.
8779012 (T22-603/15N)). The financial support is gratefully ac-
knowledged.
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