This action is for support of a Presidential Young Investigator award. The research addresses soil-structure interaction under conditions of earthquake and general dynamic loading. Examples include the interaction between a building or bridge foundation (footings or piles) and the soil on which it rests, or the interaction between a tunnel, pipeline, power or communication cable, and the ground through which it runs. This interaction may result in damage to the structure. The analysis of this phenomenon for the case of small ground motions is a difficult problem: for the large ground displacements that occur near the surface fault of a large earthquake, the problem becomes much more difficult. The goal of this project is to develop a firm understanding of the subject through a coordinated research program involving (1) an investigation of the corresponding fundamental problems in the context of the theory of elasticity and plasticity, (2) numerical modeling using elasto-plastic constitutive theories by finite element and boundary integral equation methods, and (3) experiments to understand the underlying physical phenomena.
