Viscoelastic approximation of poroelastic media for wave scattering problems

Abstract

Herein, we propose a simplified and approximate method for solving dynamic problems in poroelastic media. The method is based on the definition of equivalent-viscoelastic materials that have the same wave numbers as poroelastic media. The viscoelastic approximation was applied to study the scatter of plane compressional waves by a spherical poroelastic inhomogeneity. In this wave scattering problem, the poroelastic and equivalent-viscoelastic solutions gave almost identical results far away from the inhomogeneity. The proposed method extends our existing numerical and analytical methods for poroelastic media. It is useful to derive approximate analytical solutions which can be applied for assessing the damping characteristics of small amplitude waves in saturated soils.