Transient elastic wave propagation in an infinite Timoshenko beam on viscoelastic foundation

This paper presents an effective numerical method for solving elastic wave propagation problems in an infinite Timoshenko beam on viscoelastic foundation in time domain. In order to use the finite element method to model the local complicated material properties of the infinite beam as well as foundation, two artificial boundaries are needed in the infinite system so as to truncate the infinite beam into a finite beam. This treatment requires an appropriate boundary condition derived and applied on the corresponding truncated boundaries. For this purpose, the time-dependent equilibrium equation of motion for beam is changed into a linear ordinary differential equation by using the operator splitting and the residual radiation methods. Simultaneously, an artificial parameter is employed in the derivation. As a result, the high-order accurate artificial boundary condition, which is local in time, is obtained by solving the ordinary differential equation. The numerical examples given in this paper demonstrate that the proposed method is of high accuracy in dealing with elastic wave propagation problems in an infinite foundation beam.