Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2012
A systematic procedure is developed to calculate ground vibration at any specific location in layered medium due to harmonic loadings applied at a circular plate on the medium. In the procedure, the technique decomposing the interaction tractions between excited plate and layered medium will be employed. The decomposed tractions will automatically match boundary values of general solutions of three dimensional wave equations in cylindrical coordinates. In numerical results, the effect of layered stratum on ground vibration will be investigated and how ground vibration in layered medium decreases with depth will be presented. Also, from the numerical results, one can observe ground vibration may not decay monotonically along distance away from vibration source. The presented scheme is proved to be effective and efficient for accurately predicting near-field ground response to harmonic loadings applied at a rigid circular plate on layered medium. Comments on the presented scheme and numerical results will be given.