An efficient soil-building model for ground-borne vibration assessment based on surrogate modelling

This paper presents a three-dimensional model for soil-building systems in the context of ground-borne vibration assessment that stands out in computational efficiency. The model employs the finite element method to represent the building structure, while the soil-structure interaction is efficiently modelled using the modified pile-soil interaction method originally proposed by Novak, with the plane-strain solution assembled in two orthogonal vertical planes under symmetry assumptions to provide a 3D pile-head impedance suitable for coupling to the building. The accuracy of the proposed model is assessed by comparing its results with those obtained from more detailed modelling strategies that provide a refined three-dimensional representation of the piled foundation system. Subsequently, a surrogate modelling framework is developed to enable rapid prediction of the vibration response at the centre of each floor of the building for new combinations of input variables. The surrogate model is trained on a dataset generated from the proposed numerical model and is designed to capture the relationship between key structural parameters and the corresponding dynamic response. This results in a computationally efficient tool capable of near-instantaneous predictions, making it suitable for applications requiring repeated simulations, such as optimisation, uncertainty quantification and parametric studies.