Presented here is a numerical investigation that (re-)appraises standard rules for space/time discretization in seismic wave propagation analyses. Although the issue is almost off the table of research, situations are often encountered where (established) discretization criteria are not observed and inaccurate results possibly obtained. In particular, a detailed analysis of discretization criteria is carried out for wave propagation through elastic and elastic-plastic media. The establishment of such criteria is especially important when accurate prediction of high-frequency motion is needed and/or in the presence of highly non-linear material models. Current discretization rules for wave problems in solids are critically assessed as a conditio sine qua non for improving verification/validation procedures in applied seismology and earthquake engineering. For this purpose, the propagation of shear waves through a 1D stack of 3D finite elements is considered, including the use of wide-band input motions in combination with both linear elastic and non-linear elastic-plastic material models. The blind use of usual rules of thumb is shown to be sometimes debatable, and an effort is made to provide improved discretization criteria. Possible pitfalls of wave simulations are pointed out by highlighting the dependence of discretization effects on time duration, spatial location, material model and specific output variable considered.

PREdiction of NOn-LINear soil behavior (PRENOLIN) is an international benchmark aiming to test multiple numerical simulation codes that are capable of predicting nonlinear seismic site response with various constitutive models. One of the objectives of this project is the assessment of the uncertainties associated with nonlinear simulation of 1D site effects. A first verification phase (i.e., comparison between numerical codes on simple idealistic cases) will be followed by a validation phase, comparing the predictions of such numerical estimations with actual strongmotion recordings obtained at well-known sites. The benchmark presently involves 21 teams and 23 different computational codes. We present here the main results of the verification phase dealing with simple cases. Three different idealized soil profiles were tested over a wide range of shear strains with different input motions and different boundary conditions at the sediment/bedrock interface. A first iteration focusing on the elastic and viscoelastic cases was proved to be useful to ensure a common understanding and to identify numerical issues before pursuing the nonlinear modeling. Besides minor mistakes in the implementation of input parameters and output units, the initial discrepancies between the numerical results can be attributed to (1) different understanding of the expression “input motion” in different communities, and (2) different implementations of material damping and possible numerical energy dissipation. The second round of computations thus allowed a convergence of all teams to the Haskell–Thomson analytical solution in elastic and viscoelastic cases. For nonlinear computations, we investigate the epistemic uncertainties related only to wave propagation modeling using different nonlinear constitutive models. Such epistemic uncertainties are shown to increase with the strain level and to reach values around 0.2 (log10 scale) for a peak ground acceleration of 5 m=s2 at the base of the soil column, which may be reduced by almost 50% when the various constitutive models used the same shear strength and damping implementation.