Full-Wave Three-Dimensional Numerical Simulation of the Rayleigh Waves Interaction with Seismic Barriers from Granular Materials

Seismic barriers—specially designed near-surface human-made heterogeneities—are the prominent way of the critical infrastructure isolation from surface waves during the earthquake initiation. Trenches or specially designed granular material fillers may be utilized. In this work, the process of the Rayleigh waves interaction with specially designed barriers is simulated in the full-wave three-dimensional formulation, directed towards the analysis of their optimal geometry. The dynamic behavior of the barrier material is described in the frame of an elastoviscoplastic medium model with different for compression and tension elastic moduli. The numerical solution is constructed with the original explicit-implicit computational scheme, based on the linear elastic solution correction. The usage of the grid-characteristic scheme on parallelepiped meshes guarantees high spatial resolution of all types of seismic waves.