An IBEM-FEM model of the Rayleigh wave-scattering function of long walls

Resumo

This work presents a numerical method to investigate the ground vibration screening capability of

long walls and how their presence affects the wave propagation in the soil. Incident Rayleigh waves imping-
ing on the wall are considered as seismic excitation. The soil is modeled as a two-dimensional, homogeneous,

transversely isotropic, viscoelastic half-space modeled through an indirect formulation of the Boundary Element
Method (IBEM), discretized by constant boundary elements. The method consists of a superposition of Green’s

functions for uniformly distributed surface loads. The wall is discretized by linear-elastic, four-noded, isoparamet-
ric, quadrilateral finite elements. This coupling results in an IBEM-FEM model in which traction and displacement

fields within the half-space containing the wall subjected to Rayleigh waves are related through sets of contact

tractions applied to the boundary elements. Post-processing from these tractions yields quantities such as the dis-
placement and strain fields within the half-space, which are used to study how the presence of the wall affects the

ground vibration generated by Rayleigh waves.