Time-domain finite element analysis of soil-structure interaction problems

This study develops a time-domain finite element method to perform the soil-structure interaction analysis. First a traditional finite mesh is generated with absorbing boundary conditions, and then the earthquake time-history accelerations or displacements are applied at the bottom of the soil mesh. These artificial earthquake data are obtained from the well-developed program SIMQKE, which generates statistically independent artificial acceleration time histories and tries to match the specified response spectrum referred to the design response spectrum mentioned in Taiwan, Earthquake Resistant Design Code and Illustration of Constructions. The program SHAKE91 is used to compute the linear response of the semi-infinite horizontally layered soil deposit overlying a uniform half-space subjected to vertically propagating shear wave. Using the procedure, one can perform the soil-structure interaction analysis in a local region as simple as the traditional finite element dynamic analysis.