Soil–structure interaction for a SDOF oscillator supported by a flexible foundation embedded in a half-space: Closed-form solution for incident plane SH-waves

Abstract

A closed-form analytical solution is presented for the dynamic response of a SDOF oscillator, supported by a flexible foundation embedded in an elastic half-space, and excited by plane SH waves. The solution is obtained by the wave function expansion method. The solution is verified for the special case of a rigid foundation by comparison with published results. The model is used to investigate the effect of the foundation flexibility on the system response. The results show that the effect is significant for both foundation response and structural relative response. For a system with more flexible foundation, the radiation damping is smaller, the foundation response is larger, especially for obliquely incident waves, while the structural relative response is smaller, and the system frequency shifts towards lower frequencies. This simple model may be helpful to obtain insight into the effects of soil–structure interaction for a slim structure on an extended flexible foundation.