Numerical simulation of soil-structure elastodynamic interaction using iterative-adaptive BEM-FEM coupled strategies

Abstract

The study of solid–solid interaction problems is of significant interest in many engineering areas, such as structural dynamics or soil–structure interaction problems. In many of these cases, a localized and well-defined structure is embedded or connected to an infinite or semi-infinite domain, and thus the best option is to use different numerical techniques to model each part of the problem. In this paper, the authors propose two iterative coupling strategies to tackle this type of problem, considering the structure to be modelled by the FEM and the soil by the BEM. In both approaches, optimized relaxation parameters are employed, improving the efficiency of the analyses. Within the proposed iterative coupling algorithms, adaptive refinement of the FEM mesh may also be performed, in order to increase the accuracy of the calculations. Numerical examples are presented in the end of the manuscript, illustrating the main features of the proposed methods, assessing their applicability and effectiveness.