Boundary element methods for soil-structure interaction

This book looks at how a structure and the ground beneath it affect each other. The effect matters most when heavy buildings are placed on soft soil, where it can alter both the superstructure above and the foundation below. Soil-structure interaction is a central concern of structural engineering and draws on several branches of civil engineering. It is especially important for nuclear power plants, concrete dams and earth dams.

The subject reaches well beyond these examples, covering buildings, bridges, tunnels and underground works. Dynamic interaction under seismic loading is a major focus of earthquake engineering. Because the problem involves both bounded and unbounded media with different mechanical properties, realistic engineering analysis requires numerical methods. The boundary element method suits this task because it only needs to discretize the boundaries of complex and often unbounded geometries. The authors also show that nonlinear behaviour, which frequently arises in these problems, can be handled effectively by combining boundary and finite element discretizations.

The book is written by W. S. Hall, of the School of Computing and Mathematics at the University of Teesside in Middlesbrough, UK, and G. Oliveto, of the Division of Structural Engineering at the University of Catania, Italy.