Wave Propagation in Porous Media—A Review

Abstract

Wave propagation in porous media is of interest in various diversified areas of science and engineering. The theory of the phenomenon has been studied extensively in soil mechanics, seismology, acoustics, earthquake engineering, ocean engineering, geophysics, and many other disciplines. This review presents a general survey of the literature within the context of porous media mechanics. Following a review of the Biot’s theory of wave propagation in linear, elastic, fluid saturated porous media which has been the basis of many analyses, we present various analytical and numerical solutions obtained by several researchers. Biot found that there are two dilatational waves and one rotational wave in a saturated porous medium. It has been noted that the second kind of dilatational waves are highly attenuated and are associated with a diffusion type process. The wave having the highest velocity (the first kind) represents the compression wave in the water phase. The dilatational wave in the elastic soil matrix is the second kind wave. The influence of coupling between two phases has an increasing effect on the first kind wave and a decreasing effect on the second wave. The shear wave in the elastic wave travels at the lowest velocity and is not affected by coupling. Procedures to predict the liquefaction of soils due to earthquakes have been reviewed in detail. Extension of Biot’s theory to unsaturated soils has been discussed, and it was noted that, in general, equations developed for saturated media were employed for unsaturated media by replacing the density and compressibility terms with modified values for a water-air mixture. Various approaches to determine the permeability of porous media from attenuation of dilatational waves have been described in detail. Since the prediction of acoustic wave speeds and attenuations in marine sediments has been extensively studied in geophysics, these studies have been reviewed along with the studies on dissipation of water waves at ocean bottoms. The mixture theory which has been employed by various researchers in continuum mechanics is also discussed within the context of this review. Finally, we present an alternative approach to obtain governing equations of wave propagation in porous media from macroscopic balance equations.