This text consists of up-to-date contributions from leading European researchers and practitioners centred on soil-structure interaction problems. The boundary element method is used as an appropriate solution technique for problems involving complex geometries, and often unbounded media. For non-linear problems the boundary element method is used in conjunction with the finite element method. Other topics are treated, such as fracture mechanics, from which advanced methods may be taken for future use in earthquake engineering. Overall, the book provides an authorative guide to the literature on the subject covered and should prove a useful tool for practising engineers, students and scholars in the fields of structural, geotechnical and earthquake engineering. Engineers and students may readily locate the materials or methods available for the solution of their particular problem while scholars may discover methods previously not considered for the particular application being considered.
The book should also be of interest to the larger community of applied mathematicians and software developers in seeing a field where the boundary element method can provide a wealth of relevant and efficient solutions. Finally the book can be used as a starting point for research and for the investigation of unsolved problems in soil-structure and fluids-structure-soil interaction, particularly non-linear coupled problems which could be advantageously approached by means of boundary element methods.