PROPAGACIÓN DE ONDAS EN MEDIOS CONTINUOS ESTRATIFICADOS POR EL MÉTODO INDIRECTO DE ELEMENTOS DE FRONTERA

Abstract

In the field of engineering there are some cases of study where the main problem is to know the material characteristics of the medium, being the case of the oil explorations, where a precise knowledge of the characteristics of the subsoil is needed to carry out perforations and hydrocarbon search; another example occurs in deep foundations, where the characteristics of the subsoil are important for their analysis and design. For these reasons, numerical methods (finite element method and finite differences method) have been developed to simulate the real behavior of the subsoil and to determinate the characteristics of the layers. This work focuses in studying and calculating the distribution of displacements and pressures in stratified mediums. Two cases are studied here: solid-fluid and solid-fluid-solid. The problem was solved by adopting a formulation based on the indirect boundary elements method, using Green's functions. To validate the results, the same problem was solved using the discreet wave number method. As main results, it was obtained the pressure fields of the fluid as well as the field of velocities of wave propagation. With this information, it is possible to characterize the material properties of the medium. The contributions of this work were mainly the formulation based on the indirect boundary elements methods as well as its computational implementation in FORTRAN. Taking account that this method has not been deeply studied in Mexico, the obtained experience might be very useful for future investigations. Finally, we hope this work will be employed as a numerical support for modeling of stratified mediums, like subsoil, submerged structures and for determination of damage in heterogeneous medium.