A SIMPLE BOUNDARY ELEMENT FORMULATION AND ITS APPLICATION TO WAVE-FIELD EXCITED SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION

A simple boundary element formulation which is based directly on the point load solutions for an elastic full‐space is presented. It is integrated in a finite element program to calculate dynamic soil‐structure interaction problems. The combined boundary and finite element method is applied to structures which are excited by horizontally propagating waves in the soil. For three different types of flexible structure‐elastic beams, low and high (square) shear walls‐and the corresponding rigid structures the vibration modes and the soil‐structure transfer functions have been investigated. The flexible foundations display the same wave pattern as the exciting free‐field of the soil, but the amplitudes are reduced with increasing frequency, depending on the stiffness or wave resistance of the structure. Rigid structures show, in part, quite different behaviour, giving free‐field reductions caused by kinematic and inertial soil‐structure interaction. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd