BOUNDARY-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF STRESSES IN AN AXISYMMETRICAL SOIL MASS UNDERGOING CONSOLIDATION

A time domain boundary element method (BEM) for evaluating stresses in an axisymmetric soil mass undergoing consolidation has been developed . Previous BEM work on axisymmetric poroelasticity for boundary displa cements and pore pressures is extended to permit the computation of st resses at both boundary and interior points. The stress formulation pr eserves the surface-only discretization.The boundary displacement inte gral equation is progressively differentiated to obtain the related st ress and strain integral equations. Explicit expressions for the stead y-state axisymmetric fundamental solutions are derived in this process . The transient components of the integrands are obtained directly fro m the transformation of the three-dimensional kernels into a cylindric al system. Numerical implementation of these integral equations is car ried out within a general purpose BEM computer code and several illust rative examples are presented to validate the method.