Publication Date:
1989-10-01
Description:
The investigation of complex soil‐structure interaction problems is usually carried out with numerical solution procedures such as the finite element or the boundary element method. It must be noted, however, that the choice of one or the other of these approaches is not just a matter of preferences; depending on the type of the problem under consideration, either boundary or finite elements may be more advantageous. A considerable expansion in the computational power can be obtained, on the other hand, if one resorts to hybrid schemes which retain the main advantages of the two methods and eliminate their respective disadvantages. This paper presents results obtained with a boundary element‐finite element coupling procedure, and discusses its applicability to some representative soil‐structure interaction problems. The structures considered are elastic systems, such as foundations, tunnels and filled trenches (modelled by finite elements), which are coupled with homogeneous elastic halfspaces (modelled by boundary elements). The examples demonstrate the importance of using a model that includes wave radiation effects. The coupling approach is formulated entirely in the time domain so that an extension of the algorithm to non‐linear analyses seems to present no further difficulties. Copyright © 1989 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Print ISSN:
0098-8847
Electronic ISSN:
1096-9845
Topics:
Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying
