Dynamic response of a frame-foundation-soil system: a coupled BEM–FEM procedure and a GPU implementation

Graphics processing units have experienced an increasing demand for general-purpose computer applications such as engineering, science, finance, among other areas. This study uses such devices to analyze the performance of a code designed to evaluate the dynamic response of frame-foundation-soil system. In the present article, a direct version of the boundary element method (BEM) is applied to synthesize the 3D dynamic compliance matrix of a rigid and massless foundation interacting with unbounded soil profiles. The foundation compliance matrix is coupled to a frame, modeled by the finite element method (FEM) leading to the dynamic response of a coupled frame-foundation-soil system. The direct version of the 3D boundary element method is built based on the stationary fundamental solution of an elastic full-space. Viscoelastic effects are incorporated by means of the elastic–viscoelastic correspondence principle. The article describes the methodology applied to couple rigid bodies with the BEM mesh. The soil-foundation interaction result is given in terms of a dynamic compliance matrix for a rigid and massless foundation. The frame structural analysis is based on FEM where bar and beam elements are coupled. This strategy allows performing frequency domain analysis of such structural systems. The performance analysis is done by comparing two codes: one was exclusively developed in C language and the other one in CUDA C (Compute Unified Device Architecture). The level of speedup was achieved by implementing some functions in the frame model, i.e., on the FEM based code.