| Abstract: | A technique for modeling transient wave propagation in unbounded media is extended and applied to seismic soil–structure interaction analysis in the time domain. The technique, based on the discontinuous Galerkin method, requires lower computational cost and less storage than the boundary element method, and the time‐stepping scheme resulting from Newmark's method in conjunction with the technique is unconditionally stable, allowing for efficient and robust time‐domain computations. To extend the technique to cases characterized by seismic excitation, the free‐field motion is used to compute effective forces, which are introduced on the boundary of the computational domain containing the structure and the soil in the vicinity of the structure. A numerical example on a dam–foundation system subjected to seismic excitation demonstrates the performance of the method. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
