Analytical and numerical solutions for wave propagation in water-saturated porous layered half-space

Abstract

A fluid-saturated one-layer continuum underlain by a rigid half-space is considered. An exact solution is developed in frequency domain for analyzing disturbance induced by a strip footing located at the surface with vertical harmonic excitation. Since the analytical solution can be used only for very simple conditions, a finite element model has been developed also and compared with the exact solution. It is shown that finite element results are in close agreement with the results which have been obtained by a transformation technique. The proposed finite element scheme can take into account the complex geometry and inhomogeneity for practical problems. Besides this, the analytical results exhibit the overall characteristic of wave propagation in porous media and will provide a representative test problem which can be used for a quantitative evaluation of the accuracy of various numerical solution methods.