Numerical Study of Seismic Vibrations of Closely Located Buried Large Structures

Abstract

The paper presents an efficient numerical technique for 3D-modeling of seismic stability of large buried structures. This technique allows considering the subsoil-structure contact interaction, gravity field effects, the inhomogeneous structure of soil and the varieties location of the earthquake hypocenter. As part of this technique is substantiated sizing of the soil-structure computational domain and continuum model for hard and soft soil foundations describing. The numerical technique for determining the kinematic conditions at the lower boundary of the computational domain from the experimental accelerations at the soil surface is given, offered special non-reflecting waves boundary conditions. The methods described above and algorithms for seismic resistance solving have been implemented in certified software package “Dynamica-3”, parallelization of the algorithm has been held according to the spatial domain decomposition principle. The developed numerical technique allows correctly posing the problem of seismic vibrations of buried structure, reducing computing costs and increasing the efficiency of numerical studies of Earthquake Engineering. Through this, the multiple recalculation of the task with different action scenarios generated from experimental seismograms by probabilistic methods became technically possible. The results of these calculations allow reflecting the experience of many earthquakes, which increases reliability of the estimates. The paper presents the model calculations results of seismic stability of large-sized buried structure—the mutual vertical and horizontal displacement of soil and building walls—which can then be used to assess strength of adjacent underground pipelines. A number of numerical experiments on seismic vibrations of nearby large-sized structures have been carried out to assess the mutual influence of structures on their behavior in an earthquake. It is established that the influence of nearby large-sized objects on seismic vibrations of structures differs for different buildings.