BOUNDARY ELEMENT FORMULATIONS FOR NONLINEAR SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION

Abstract

In this thesis, a comprehensive study to overcome soil-structure interaction problems that are present in nonlinear analysis of piled rafts. Direct boundary element formulations are used to perform nonlinear analysis of piled rafts. The raft is considered as a shear-deformable plate, whereas the soil is modeled as either Winkler springs or elastic half space (EHS). Piles are modeled using their actual geometry including all interaction effects. Two different direct boundary element formulations are reviewed: a) Plate stiffness matrix formulation (FEM-like formulation), and b) adding stiffness matrices to the plate integral equation formulation (BEM-like formulation) are used.