Civil Engineering Association

The monograph entitled “Dynamics of Structure and Foundation -– A Unified
Approach” consists of two volumes. While in Volume 1 we dealt with background theories and formulations that constitute the above subject, this second volume deals with application of these theories to various aspects of civil engineering problems constituting topics related to dynamic soil-structure interaction, machine foundation and
earthquake engineering. If we have managed to stir the wrath of the professionals in Volume 1 with mazes of tensors, differential and integral equations, it is our strong conviction that in this
present volume we will be able to considerably appease this fraternity for it constitutes of a number of applications that are innovative, easy to apply and solutions to many practical problems that puts an engineer into considerable difficulty and uncertainties in a design office. We start Volume 2 with the topic of Dynamic Soil Structure Interaction (DSSI). We
believe this topic would play a key role in future and more so with the distinct possibility of construction of Nuclear power plants (especially in India) globally. A clear concept on this topic would surely be essential for designing such plants. Though we have dealt this topic only in terms of fundamental concepts, yet we feel that we have given sufficient details to eradicate the misnomer from which many engineers suffer that “DSSI is nothing but adding some springs to the boundary of a structure and then
doing the analysis through a computer”.The geotechnical aspects that play an extremely important role in selecting the soilspring value, (that are highly influenced by the strain range) have been dealt in quite
detail. We hope that this section will do away with some of the major blunders that we make in DSSI analysis, and appreciate how the results thus obtained become unrealistic and questionable. We sincerely hope that engineers performing DSSI analysis, would start paying sufficient attention to some of the key engineering parameters as furnished in the soil report – that are being habitually ignored in design offices.
Second chapter consists of design and analysis of machine foundations (both block and frame type). In our collective experience as a consultant and academician we have seen significant confusion on this topic as to who is responsible for this hapless orphan, structural or geotechnical engineers? While people from classical soil mechanics disowns it, as it involves the evaluation of eigen-values and vectors that are far away  their traditional failure theories of foundation, structural engineers on the other hand
are equally reluctant to shoulder the guardianship for their inherent apathy towards ‘what lies beneath the machine foundation’. As such, a design involving machine foundation throws the most challenging and interesting task in the domain of civil engineering that requires multi-discipline knowledge and should be equally interesting to an engineer having structural or geotechnical background. The matrix analysis
concept that we have introduced herein is quite easy to follow and we hope wouldB bridge the gap that is still prevalent in academics and practice alike. We would be looking forward to have some feedback from hardened professionals who are working in this area, as to how they feel about our representation which we believe is quite novel and has tried to answer a number of problems that often become burning issues on which they have spent significant time on clarifying either to their Clients or Project Management Consultants.
The last chapter of this volume deals with the most fearful force Mother Nature has created – “Earthquake”. Earthquake engineering as a topic is so vast, complex and diverse (and ever changing) that we concede that it did give us some uncomfortable moments as to what should justifiably constitute this chapter? Majority of the books that address this topic are far too focused on buildings and there are hardly any book
around, that has addressed other specialized structures like chimneys, dams, retaining walls, water tanks etc (except some very specialized literature). It should be realized that some of these structures are expensive, important and cannot be ignored while building an earthquake resistant infrastructure.
Buildings, we concede are the biggest casualties during an earthquake and are directly related to human life but damages to other structures as mentioned above can also create havoc especially in the post earthquake relief scenario. The major focus being still thrust on buildings, we were also quite surprised to find that there is still much room for improvement in many of these structures, where technologies which are as old as 60 years are still in use (for instance earthquake response of retaining walls). We tried to improve upon many of them and believe that we have brought about
a number of innovative solutions that can be adapted in a design office environment and can also be used as a basis for further research.
While presenting the topic no demarcation is made between geotechnical and structural earthquake engineering. For, as a seismic specialist our job is to minimize the destruction of property and save human lives. Thus doing a structural design we can perform the most sophisticated analysis and provide the most expensive detailing and our building still fails due to liquefaction killing people__“no medals for doing an excellent structural design!”, so if you do something do it in totality and not in isolation and this has been our major endeavour- that we have tried to communicate to you through this book.