A hybrid boundary method for seismic wave propagation problems in slopes

The seismic behavior of a slope site has a critical impact on its stability and the seismic response of structures located on or near the slope. In this paper, a hybrid boundary method(HBM) is proposed for the site response analysis of slopes. Viscous and viscous-spring boundaries are applied in the HBM and equivalent loads are calculated separately on the bottom and the lateral boundary. A horizontally extended model is used to verify the HBM. The results show that the maximum error of the HBM is only 2.010%. On the ground surface of the slope site, amplification occurs at the crest side and de-amplification occurs at the toe side under various cases. The ratio of the maximum and minimum PGA on the ground surface could exceed 2. Therefore, great attention should be paid to the spatial variability of ground motion on slope sites. The HBM is also compared with four conventional approaches. The maximum errors of all the conventional approaches exceed 70%. These examples demonstrate that the HBM has much higher accuracy in practice than conventional approaches. •A hybrid boundary method(HBM) is proposed for the site response analysis of slopes.•The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method has been verified.•The computational accuracy of the HBM and four conventional approaches are compared.