RESPONSE OF A LAYERED VISCOELASTIC HALF-SPACE TO A MOVING POINT LOAD

A procedure to obtain the steady-state displacements and stresses within a multi-layered viscoelastic half-space generated by a buried or surface point load moving with constant speed parallel to the surface of the half-space is presented. The approach is based on an integral representation of the complete response in terms of wavenumbers. The effects of layering are included by use of an exact factorization of the displacement and stress fields in terms of generalized transmission and reflection coefficients. The results in the time domain are obtained by Fourier synthesis of the frequency response which in tum is obtained by numerical integration over one horizontal wavenumber. Numerical results for the displacement and stress fields on the surface and within the half-space are presented for surface and buried loads moving with various subsonic and supersonic speeds.