Volume 1, Issue 1 — Year 2024 — Article e100009

Vida Nikvand¹; Masoud Hajialilue Bonab²

1. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz 5166616471, Iran
2. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz 5166616471, Iran

Mesh generation in the pre-processing stage of a conventional finite element analysis, can be a time-consuming procedure. Different methods have been proposed to modify this drawback. One of the proposed methods is the polygonal finite element technology. The polygonal finite element method (PFEM) enhances the conventional finite element (FE) approach with two major modifications. First, using polygonal elements causes mesh generation significantly easier. Second, by incorporation of more nodes per element, interpolation can be done more precisely. Like the conventional finite element method (FEM), the PFEM cannot model solely radiation damping effect of an unbounded media. In this paper, for the first time, the PFEM is coupled with the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) and the proposed method is employed to evaluate seismic soil-structure interaction problems. Two shaking table tests are designed and used to model seismic tunnel responses. Then by using the achieved experimental results, accuracy and efficiency of the PFEM-SBFEM are investigated. It is shown that the introduced numerical approach leads to results that are in excellent agreement with those of the designed shaking table tests.

Scaled boundary method; Polygonal finite element method; Tunnel; Seismic analysis; Shaking table