Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

A. Strukelj

• The frame of this paper is the development of methods and procedures for the description of the motion of an arbitrary shaped foundation. Since the infinite half-space cannot be properly described by a model of finite dimensions without violating the radiation condition, the basic problems are infinite dimensions of the half-space as well as its non-homogeneous nature. Consequently, an approachThe frame of this paper is the development of methods and procedures for the description of the motion of an arbitrary shaped foundation. Since the infinite half-space cannot be properly described by a model of finite dimensions without violating the radiation condition, the basic problems are infinite dimensions of the half-space as well as its non-homogeneous nature. Consequently, an approach has been investigated to solve this problem indirectly by developing Green's function in which the non-homogeneity and the infiniteness of the half-space has been included. When the Green's function is known, the next step will be the evaluation of contact stresses acting between the foundation and the surface of the half-space through an integral equation. The equation should be solved in the area of the foundation using Green's function as the kernel. The derivation of three-dimensional Green's function for the homogeneous half-space (Kobayashi and Sasaki 1991) has been made using the potential method. Partial differential equations occurring in the problem have been made ordinary ones through the Hankel integral transform. The general idea for obtaining the three-dimensional Green's function for the layered half-space is similar. But in that case some additional phenomena may occur. One of them is the possibility of the appearance of Stonely surface waves propagating along the contact surfaces of layers. Their contribution to the final result is in most cases important enough that they should not be neglected. The main advantage of results presented in comparing to other obtained with numerical methods is their accuracy especially in the case of thin layers because all essential steps of Green's function evaluation except of the contour integration along the branch cut have been made analytically. On the other hand the disadvantage of this method is that the mathematical effort for obtaining the Green's function is increasing drastically with the increase of the number of layers. Future work will therefore be directed in simplifying of the above described process…