Amalgamated body waves, surface waves, and source signature in a half-space under a shear load

Abstract

The half-space elastic response to a source of a nonuniformly spatially distributed impulsive shear load is presented in this paper. Specifically, an infinite semicircular canyon of a finite radius is embedded in the surface of the half-space where an impulsive shear load is tangentially distributed over the entire surface of the canyon. In an earlier work, the author gave an analytical-numerical method for transient multicurvilinear dimensional boundary-value problems and its employment to a nonuniformly spatially distributed shear load. Here, the resultant transient deformation of the half-space is described and interpreted. In particular, a detailed discussion is devoted to the appearance of spatially stationary strong discontinuity fronts in the interior of the deformed half-space. These fronts, which disclose the nature of the prescribed source of disturbance, are the source signature. A detailed discussion is then devoted to the appearance of amalgamated wave fronts (not to be confused with head waves), which are neither dilatational nor shear waves, and their surface waves, all revealing themselves explicitly by the solution method.