The influence of imperfectly known local subsoil conditions on the prediction of ground-borne vibrations of buildings

This paper examines the influence of imperfectly known local subsoil conditions on the response prediction of buildings to ground-borne environmental vibration. A probabilistic finite element-perfectly matched layers model is developed for the analysis of the dynamic soil-structure interaction problem where the shear modulus of the soil is modeled as a conditional random field. An incident wave field is propagated through the finite element-perfectly matched layers model by decomposing the displacement field of the soil in accordance with the subdomain formulation developed for the dynamic soil-structure interaction problem. Monte Carlo simulation is used to propagate the uncertainty on the subsoil properties to the response of a building. A parametric study is performed with respect to the spatial correlation length of the random field representing the shear modulus of the subsoil, and the foundation type of the building. The uncertain subsoil properties affect both the incident wave field exciting the building and the dynamic stiffness of the coupled soil-building system. The uncertainty of the building response varies over frequency bands but as a general trend increases with frequency.status: accepte