Seismo-VLAB: An Open-Source Software for Soil–Structure Interaction Analyses

Abstract

In the fields of structural and geotechnical engineering, improving the understanding of soil–structure interaction (SSI) effects is critical for earthquake-resistant design. Engineers and practitioners often resort to finite element (FE) software to advance this objective. Unfortunately, the availability of software equipped with boundary representation for absorbing scattered waves and ensuring consistent input ground motion prescriptions, which is necessary for accurately representing SSI effects, is currently limited. To address such limitations, the authors developed Seismo-VLAB (SVL v1.0-stable) an open-source software designed to perform SSI simulations. The methodology considers the integration of advanced techniques, including the domain decomposition method (DDM), perfectly matched layers (PMLs), and domain reduction method (DRM), in addition to parallel computing capabilities to accelerate the solution of large-scale problems. In this work, the authors provide a detailed description of the implementation for addressing SSI modeling, validate some of the SVL’s features needed for such purpose, and demonstrate that the coupled DRM–PML technique is a necessary condition for accurately solving SSI problems. It is expected that SVL provides a significant contribution to the SSI research community, offering a self-contained and versatile alternative. The software’s practical application in analyzing SSI and directionality effects on 3D structures under seismic loading demonstrates its capability to model real-world earthquake responses in structural engineering.

Keywords

• finite element program
• soil–structure interaction
• perfectly matched layer
• domain reduction method
• high-performance computing