Speaker
Description
Modeling wave propagation in soil or soil-structure domains using conventional finite element methods necessitates the simulation of extensive spatial domains to avoid reflections at artificial boundaries and to ensure the accuracy of absorbing boundary conditions. Especially for three-dimensional problems, the computational costs associated with this approach increases significantly, making it impractical for large-scale applications.
To address these challenges, the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) provides an efficient alternative by reducing the near field to a minimum and defining an unbounded subdomain around it. This subdomain is constructed by scaling the soil-structure interface towards infinity, enabling the representation of infinite domains without requiring excessively large finite models. Within this framework, the reaction forces at the interface are computed using the acceleration unit-impulse response method, introducing a convolution integral into the equations of motion governing wave propagation in the bounded domain.
This contribution examines the idea of dividing the unbounded subdomain into further subdomains to enable a more efficient evaluation of the convolution integral and a faster treatment of the corresponding terms in the time solver. While the partitioning of the unbounded domain into decoupled subdomains has been proposed before, this study focuses on its evaluation and assessment of the number of divisions with respect to computational efficiency and accuracy. The results underscore the potential of this strategy to enhance computational performance while maintaining acceptable accuracy, offering significant advantages regardless of the problem size.
