THE INFLUENCE OF BOUNDARY CONDITIONS ON THE RESPONSE OF UNDERGROUND STRUCTURES SUBJECTED TO EARTHQUAKE

Abstract

The paper deals with the prediction of the response of a real underground structure subjected to earthquake. A fully dynamic analysis is carried out in the GEO5 FEM program using the Finite Element Method. Limiting our attention to a two-dimensional analysis we focus on the implementation of special boundary conditions along the vertical edges of the computational model. A simple study is carried out first to show that incorrectly applied boundary conditions may significantly influence the actual design of underground structures loaded by vertically propagating shear waves. This study promotes the combination of so called free-field and static boundary conditions as demonstrated on a simple example.

Keywords

• earthquake, shear weave, accelerogram, finite element method, free-field boundary, absorbing boundary, fixed boundary