Seismic response of alluvial valleys to SH waves

This paper presents a theoretical study on the seismic response of alluvial valleys. Theconsidered model consists of a two-dimensional elastic inclusion of arbitrary shape embedded ina stiffer half-plane excited by vertically or obliquely incident SH waves. Computations areconducted using a procedure based on the boundary element method. As known, this numericaltechnique is well suited to deal with wave propagation in infinite media as it avoids theintroduction of fictitious boundaries and reduces by one the dimensions of the problem. Thisprovides significant advantages from a computational point of view. A one-dimensional closedform solution is also used for comparison, and the most significant differences between theresults obtained using the two methods are highlighted.