ON THE DISPERSION OF SCHOLTE WAVE PROPAGATING ON A LAYERED MEDIUM

The phase velocity of the Scholte wave is experimentally studied in the case of plane multilayered systems immersed in water. The “liquid wedge” technique is used for its generation and the investigation is limited to the case where the layers have a high density and a high shear wave velocity with respect to the fluid (water). The variations of the difference between the phase velocity of the Scholte wave and the sound velocity in water is obtained by recording the “penetration factor” of the investigated wave into the liquid, the amplitude of which decays exponentially as exp(—k “z) from the surface; z measures the coordinate perpendicular to the interface and k “ designates the “penetration factor.” The agreement between theoretical and experimental results is reasonably good. The method of investigation limits our study on the dispersion of the Scholte wave to the ke values > 1.8 (k designates the wave vector in the water and e the thickness of the layer). © 1990, Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.