Open AccessThe Polarization of Distortional Waves in an Isotropic Medium
Author(s) -
Stoneley R.
Publication year - 1965
Publication title -
geophysical journal of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.302
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1365-246X
pISSN - 0016-8009
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-246x.1965.tb02072.x
Subject(s) - isotropy , anisotropy , polarization (electrochemistry) , limiting , longitudinal wave , mathematics , interpretation (philosophy) , transverse isotropy , classical mechanics , wave propagation , physics , mathematical analysis , mechanical wave , geometry , optics , chemistry , philosophy , mechanical engineering , linguistics , engineering
Summary For elastic waves propagated in any anisotropic elastic medium it is well‐known that, corresponding to any assigned direction of the wave‐normal, three different values of the wave‐velocity can exist. These are determined by the roots of a cubic equation. In the special case of an isotropic medium two of the roots are equal; one of these roots corresponds to a compressional wave, while the equal roots correspond to distortional waves. The obvious interpretation of this degeneration is that the equal roots correspond to two distortional waves polarized at right angles to one another. However, it is desirable that this conjecture should be verified by treating the isotropic medium as the limiting case of an anisotropic medium; in the present note the result is obtained by considering a medium with cubic symmetry.