The effect of inertial coupling on seismic reflection amplitudes

A problem of reflection and transmission of elastic waves at a plane interface between a uniform elastic solid half-space and a porous elastic half-space containing two immiscible fluids is investigated. The theory developed by Lo, Sposito and Majer for porous media containing two immiscible fluids is employed to find out the reflection and transmission coefficients. The incident wave is assumed to propagate through the uniform elastic half-space and two cases are considered. In the first case, a beam of plane longitudinal wave is assumed to be incident and in the second case, a beam of transverse wave is assumed to be incident at the interface. By taking granite as impervious elastic medium and columbia fine sandy loam containing air-water mixture as porous medium, reflection and transmission coefficients are obtained. By neglecting the inertial coupling coefficients, these coefficients are reduced to those obtained by Tomar and Arora using the theory of Tuncay and Corapcioglu. It is found that the inertial coupling parameters significantly affect the phase speeds and the amplitude ratios of the transmitted waves.