ABSTRACT

Rayleigh waves are dispersive due to a dependence of the wave’s speed on its wavelength. Typical example is Rayleigh waves in the Earth where waves with a higher frequency travel more slowly than those with a lower frequency. Rayleigh waves thus often appear spread out on seismograms recorded at distant earthquake recording stations [13]. Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) generated by SAW devices on rough anisotropic materials also experience considerable dispersion [20]. On the other hand, fi lm waves generated on a surface of a fi nite liquid bed [21] can be characterized by a single frequencywave component. Therefore we concentrate on a one single frequency steady-state Rayleigh wave propagation and disregard dispersion.