Use and comparison of different types of boundary elements for 2D soil–structure interaction problems

In this study, the usage and the comparison of some discontinuous boundary elements (constant, linear and quadratic) are investigated for 2D soil–structure interaction (SSI) problems. Based on the formulations presented in this study, some general purpose computer programs coded in FORTRAN77 are developed for each type of discontinuous boundary elements for elastic or visco-elastic 2D SSI problems. The programs perform the analysis in Fourier transform space. The results of 2D dynamic SSI problems are compared with those in the literature. Examples studied here indicate that present formulations have sufficient computational accuracy for analyzing 2D SSI problems. As a result of this study, the use of constant element is more sufficient than the other type of elements.