Rayleigh Waves on Curved Surfaces of Arbitrary Form

Abstract

One of the most important practical property of surface waves is that they propagate around a sufficiently smooth curved obstacle almost unhindered. This allows us to use the surface waves for checking industrial products of complicated shape when the usage of bulk waves gives undesirable reflection which strongly distorts the legitimate signal [9.1, 2]. Peculiarities of surface waves, mainly the Rayleigh waves, propagation along curved surfaces play an important role in seismology because of the Earth surface curvature [9.3-6]. In acoustoelectronics the wave propagation on curved surfaces allows us to construct the delay lines for large times [9.7-9], the so-called geodesic lenses [9.10, 11] and topographic waveguides [9.9, 12, 13]. Much attention is also paid to the Rayleigh waves on curved surfaces since these waves cause certain resonance effects in the process of bulk acoustic waves scattering by inclusions and hollows (cavities) in solids [9.14-17], as well as in hydroacoustic scattering by elastic bodies [9.18, 19].