Vibrations of square and circular foundations with concentric openings on elastic half space

A study on the dynamic characteristics of rigid foundations with special geometries such as square or circular with concentric internal holes, is presented. The foundations are resting on a homogeneous, linear elastic halfspace and are subjected to external forces or seismic wave excitation. Both 'relaxed' and 'non-relaxed' boundary conditions at the interface between the foundation and the halfspace are considered, and several parametric studies are conducted to assess the influence of either type of boundary conditions upon each of the possible modes of vibration. Results for massive and massless foundations are presented in time and frequency domains for impulsive and harmonic excitations, respectively. A time domain boundary element method (BEM) developed by the authors for the solution of a class of 3-D soil-structure interaction (SSI) problems is used for all the analyses reported in this work. The accuracy and efficiency of the method and the BEM models developed in this work are assessed on the basis of comparison studies with published results.