Determining Rayleigh damping parameters of soils for finite element analysis

Soil damping ratio is an important parameter for modelling the dynamic behaviour of soil embankment structures, especially for the micro-vibration analysis of hospitals and high-tech industries, which have a very severe construction requirement for vibration. This paper explores using a least-squares method to evaluate the Rayleigh damping parameters for the finite element analysis of wave propagation in soils. The least-squares method was first used in Bornitz's equation to calculate the absorption coefficients of soils. Afterward, the best-fit Rayleigh damping parameters were obtained using those coefficients in the least-squares scheme again. Both three-dimensional finite element analyses and field experiments were performed to validate the accuracy of this method. The comparison between experimental and finite element results demonstrates that the accuracy of this least-squares method is acceptable.