ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a general analysis of acoustic pulse propagation in a 1-D inhomogeneous elastic medium using the equation of motion. It provides a generalization of an iterative method which solves equations by matching Taylor expansions of the solutions and of the functions describing the medium. The chapter explores an interesting correlation between the amplitude and the phase of the solutions that enables us to develop a general method for controlling and estimating the numerical errors. It shows that some results for a constant Young modulus and exponential variation of the bulk density. The temporal evolution of wave packets can be studied by summing several monochromatic components in the Fourier domain of the initial pulse.
