mitigation of vibrations caused by dynamic compaction considering soil nonlinearity

This paper studies the effect of wave barriers for mitigating the vibrations generated during dynamic compaction. to do so, robust and validated finite element numerical models are built with abaqus, and comprehensive parametric studies are performed to study the effect of barrier material such as soil-bentonite mixture and concrete, barrier geometry, and barrier location on the peak particle velocity in the vertical direction. it is observed that open trenches have much better performance than trenches filled up with soft or hard materials. open trenches mitigate the vibrations as much as 45% while filling the trenches with concrete and soil-bentonite mixture results in 4% and 10% reduction, respectively. furthermore, it is observed that there is no need to always fill up the trenches completely with material, and partially filled trenches can also be considered as an optimal and innovative alternative solution. all of these studies are performed considering the nonlinear behavior of the soil, which significantly affects the results. it is observed that ignoring the soil nonlinearity in mitigation of dynamic compaction vibrations results in an incorrect design of wave barriers. © 2022, iran university of science and technology.