Surface waves in a general anisotropic poroelastic solid half-space

Abstract

A method is introduced for studying surface waves in a general anisotropic poroelastic medium. The method is analogous to the one used for isotropic media and derives a complex secular equation to represent the propagation of surface waves at the stress-free plane surface of a nondissipative porous medium. The point of importance is that the derived equation is, analytically, separable into real and imaginary parts and hence can be solved by iterative numerical methods. A root of this secular equation represents the existence of surface waves and calculates the apparent phase velocity along a given direction on the surface. Numerical work is carried out for the model of a crustal rock. The propagation of surface waves is studied numerically for the top three anisotropies (i.e. triclinic, monoclinic, orthorhombic). © 2004 RAS.