Finite layer analysis of viscoelastic layered materials

Abstract

AbstractA method is presented for obtaining the creep settlement of strip or circular loadings applied to horizontally layered soil profiles. The solution method involves applying a fourier (strip loading) or Hankel (circular loading) transform to the governing equations, which reduces the two of three dimensional problem to one involving a single spatial demension. This leads to great savings in computer storage and data preparation time, and since an exact solution may be found for each layer of material, the method has advantages over conventional finite layer techniques where field quantities must be approximated at a number of positions within each layer.The type of formulation presented hearein makies it possible to work in terms of the creep functions of the soil rather than the relaxation functions. This has distinct advantages, as it is often easier to measure the creep behaviour of a soil in the laboratory.Numerical techniques are used to invert the laplace and Hankel transforms and this means that any type of creep function (which is invertible) may be used to describe the material properties of the soil.