Green's functions in layered poroelastic half-spaces

In this paper, the complete Green's functions in a multilayered, isotropic, and poroelastic half-space are presented. It is the first time that all the common point sources, i.e. the total force, fluid force, fluid dilatation, and dislocation, are considered for a layered system. The Laplace transform is applied first to suppress the time variable. The cylindrical and Cartesian systems of vector functions and the propagator matrix method are then employed to derive the Green's functions. In the treatment of a point dislocation, an equivalent body-source concept is introduced, and the difference of a dislocation in a purely elastic and a poroelastic medium is discussed. While the spatial integrals involved in the Green's functions can be evaluated accurately by an adaptive Gauss quadrature with continued fraction expansions, the inverse Laplace transform can be carried out by applying a common numerical inversion technique. These complete Green's functions can be implemented into a suitable boundary element formulation to study the deformation and fracture problems in a layered poroelastic half-space. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.