A conservation law for testing methods of prediction of the seismic wave response of a protuberance emerging from flat ground

Abstract

We establish the equations which translate a conservation law for the problem of the seismic response of an above-ground structure (e.g., building, hill or mountain) of arbitrary shape and inquire whether both the implicit (formal) and explicit (numerical) solutions for the response obey this law for the case of a cylindrical, rectangular protuberance. Both the low-order (poor approximations of the response) as well as higher-order (supposedly better approximations) turn out to satisfy the conservation of flux relation, which means that the satisfaction of this relation is a necessary, but not sufficient, means for determining whether a solution to the scattering problem is valid.