Existence of longitudinal waves in pre-stressed anisotropic elastic medium

In a pre-stressed anisotropic elastic medium, three types of quasi-waves propagate along an arbitrary direction. In general, none of the waves is truly longitudinal. The present study finds the specific directions in a pre-stressed anisotropic elastic medium along which longitudinal waves may propagate. This paper demonstrates how the propagation of longitudinal waves is affected by various pre-stresses present in the medium. The study establishes the explicit expressions defining the existence and propagation of longitudinal waves in pre-stressed anisotropic elastic medium. These expressions involve not only the direction and elastic stiffness of the medium, but also the pre-stresses present in the medium. Changes in conditions for the existence of longitudinal waves in orthotropic, monoclinic and triclinic anisotropies are discussed in detail. The most important part of the paper is a practical aspect suggested to calculate the specific directions for the existence of longitudinal waves in pre-stressed anisotropic elastic medium. In this approach, only those parameters are used that can be observed by the receiver in a geophysical experiment of wave propagation. The existence of longitudinal waves has been shown graphically using a numerical example for three types of anisotropic symmetries in elastic medium.