Vertical dynamic analysis of a rigid disk embedded in layered saturated soils with compressible fluid

This paper introduces an approach for modelling the dynamic behavior of a vertically loaded rigid disk embedded in layered soils by coupling the analytical layer element method (ALEM) and boundary element method (BEM). The general solutions for dynamic behavior of layered saturated soils with compressible fluid are derived via ALEM. The disk-soil interface is divided into many elements according to the disk segments by utilizing BEM. The solutions for dynamic soil-disk interaction problem are obtained by coupling BEM and ALEM, where the ALEM solution is treated as the kernel function of BEM. The effectiveness of the present method is confirmed by the comparison with existing ones. Selected examples are performed to explore the effects of excitation frequency, embedded depth of the rigid disk, compressibility of pore fluid, permeability and the stratification characteristic on the dynamic responses.