The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

A graphical method for solving the wave reflection-refraction problem

McNiven, Hugh D.; Mengi, Yalçin

UCB/EERC-68/03, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1968-04, 26 pages (305/M17/1968)

Goodier and Bishop established that there is a "critical" incident angle that a train of S subscript V waves makes with the traction-free surface of an elastic halfspace and that as the incident angle passes through this critical value from above, the reflected P-wave passes through grazing incidence and emerges as a Rayleigh-type wave. In this paper, study is made of the fate of a train of S subscript V waves on striking the plane interface between two elastic materials. The method which is used to establish the nature of the waves that emerge probably is as important as the results. The method, which is graphical, is based on the notion of slowness surfaces developed by J. L. Synge using the solution of the field equations of elasticity. The method itself is the result of a systematic exploitation of an idea introduced by M. J. P. Musgrave.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-68-03.pdf (2 MB)