Solution for Soil–Structure Interaction with Direct Infinite Element in Time Domain

Abstract

This paper presents a procedure for simulating soil–structure interaction in time domain using two direct infinite elements coupled with an absorbing layer. The infinite elements are built from the exponential decay formulation, while the absorbing layer is expressed in the form of a concentrated damping matrix. In this method, the absorbing layer, applied between the mesh and infinite elements, ensures the dissipation function, whereas the infinite elements provide the necessary static part of the boundary. Using an implicit integration scheme, the procedure was tested in axisymmetric and plane strain conditions under heavy sides and rectangular impulse loadings for classical soil–structure interaction cases. The results show good performances of the method compared to conventional boundaries, viscous boundaries, and extrapolation algorithm. Easy to implement in a finite element code, the method may be applied for different kinds of direct infinite elements providing a good compromise for far-field simulation in soil–structure interaction problems.