Elastic wave propagation in an irregularly layered medium

The indirect boundary element method (IBEM) is used to simulate wave propagation in two-dimensional irregularly layered elastic media for internal line sources. The method is based on the integral representation for scattered elastic waves using single layer boundary sources. Fulfillment of the boundary conditions leads to a system of integral equations. Results are obtained in the frequency domain and seismograins are computed through Fourier synthesis. In order to test and validate the method we present various comparisons between our results and the time series obtained analytically for a buried line source in a half-space and by using the recently developed spectral element method (SEM). (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.