A computationally efficient piled-foundation model for studying the effects of ground-borne vibration on buildings

Abstract

Understanding the effects of ground-borne vibration on buildings is becoming increasingly important as pressure grows to construct high-quality buildings on existing urban sites, which are often close to busy roads or railways. The motivation behind the work presented here is the development of a computational model that enables engineers to evaluate the effectiveness of isolating buildings. This paper presents one component of such a model, namely a new three-dimensional model for modelling the propagation of ground-borne vibration through a piled foundation. A row of piles is considered, with the piles modelled using the solutions for an elastic bar and Euler beam, and the soil represented by an elastic half-space. The model is comprehensive in that it accounts for the longitudinal and transverse motion of the piles due to both external pile-head loads and interaction between neighbouring piles through wave propagation in the surrounding soil. Computational efficiency is achieved by assuming that the row comprises an infinite number of identical piles and using a combination of the boundary element method and periodic structure theory.