Transient Response of an Unsaturated Single-Layer Seabed Subjected to a Vertical Compressional Wave

Abstract

The seismic response of seabed is fundamental for researching the seismic response of marine structures. The one-dimensional transient response of an unsaturated seabed was studied in this paper. An analytical solution for a special case with infinite permeability coefficients and a semianalytical solution for a general case with arbitrary permeability coefficients were developed. The advantage of this semianalytical solution is that it can compute the behavior of unsaturated soils with very low permeability coefficients. During the derivation, the boundary conditions were transformed into homogeneous boundary conditions first, and then the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions were obtained. To obtain solutions in the time domain, the eigenfunction expansion method and the precise time-step integration method were employed. Through numerical examples, the reflection and transmission characteristics of three types of compression waves at the fluid–solid interface were elucidated. The impact of permeability coefficients and water saturation on the seismic response of the seabed was investigated through parametric analysis. When the soil is nearing saturation, even a slight change in saturation can lead to a drastic alteration in the seismic response of the nearly saturated seabed.