Nonlinearity of acoustic waves at solid-liquid interfaces

The small-amplitude and finite-amplitude propagation characteristics of laser line source excited and laser detected Scholte waves are investigated. Acoustic waves with Mach numbers up to 0.054 are observed at the interface between water and glass. In our case of a hard solid-liquid interface, the Scholte wave propagates very much like a bulk wave, for which the simple-wave equation holds. The experimental results are well fitted with this model, extended with an attenuation term. An anomalously large (compared with low amplitude viscous effects) attenuation reveals possible leakage of energy from the Scholte wave to bulk waves, through a mechanism of nonlinear mixing between the different wave modes and viscosity induced turbulence.(C) 2002 Acoustical Society of America.