Application of the perfectly matched layers for seismic soil-structure interaction analysis in the time domain

Abstract

Computational modeling of seismic soil-structure interaction in the plane-strain loading condition is presented considering a system consisting of a bridge, piles and soil. The unbounded extent of the soil is simulated by the perfectly matched layer (PML). An existing displacement-based finite-element formulation for the PML is adopted and an explicit time-marching algorithm for the formulation is implemented. The resulting procedure can model unbounded domains with varying degree of accuracy that can be controlled by the form of stretching functions used in the PML formulation and the size of the PML domain attached to the main computational domain. Numerical experiments indicate that the stretching function needs to be carefully selected to ensure stable behavior of the solution, and that an increasingly larger PML domain is necessary to obtain accurate response for an extended period of time.