Influence of orientation of fibres on surface wave in fibre‐induced anisotropic elastic medium

Abstract

AbstractAn isotropic elastic solid reinforced with a family of parallel fibres behaves anisotropic to any deformation. With orientation of all fibres along a coordinate axis in rectangular Cartesian system, this anisotropy reduces to transverse isotropy. Else with arbitrary orientation of fibre‐family, induced anisotropy lacks any symmetry. In this composite medium with arbitrary anisotropy, three‐dimensional wave motion decaying with depth propagates as a surface wave along all directions on plane boundary. Real phase velocity for this surface wave lies implicit in a system of three equations with complex coefficients. An appropriate transformation of this system yields a real characteristic equation, which is solved to get the anisotropic phase velocity of generalised surface wave. This phase velocity defines a complex slowness vector, which is used to calculate the particle motion at any point in the medium. Effects of fibre‐orientation are analysed, numerically, on the phase velocity and polarisation of surface wave. For example, in the reinforced fibres alters the contours of particle motion through increased ellipticity. However, in the presence of fibres, the decay of particle motion with depth slows down.