The influence of building interactions on seismic and elastic surface waves

TL;DR

This paper explores how building-structure interactions influence seismic and elastic surface waves, highlighting the importance of soil-structure interactions in seismic wave behavior through recent research advances and scenario analyses.

Contribution

It investigates the effects of buildings acting as inclusions in soils on elastic surface wave propagation, extending previous work on seismic wave interactions with structured soils.

Findings

Buildings significantly alter seismic surface wave trajectories.

Structured soils with inclusions can change wave propagation characteristics.

Various interaction scenarios demonstrate diverse wave behaviors.

Abstract

We outline some recent research advances on the control of elastic waves in thin and thick plates, that have occurred since the large scale experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 133901, 2014] that demonstrated significant interaction of surface seismic waves with holes structuring sedimentary soils at the meter scale. We further investigate the seismic wave trajectories in soils structured with buildings. A significant substitution of soils by inclusions, acting as foundations, raises the question of the effective dynamic properties of these structured soils. Buildings, in the case of perfect elastic conditions for both soil and buildings, are shown to interact and strongly influence elastic surface waves; such site-city seismic interactions were pointed out in [Bulletin of Seismological Society of America 92, 794-811, 2002], and we investigate a variety of scenarios to illustrate the variety of behaviours possible.