A mixture theory analysis for the surface-wave propagation in an unsaturated porous medium

The mixture theory is employed to the analysis of surface-wave propagation in a porous medium saturated by two compressible and viscous fluids (liquid and gas). A linear isothermal dynamic model is implemented which takes into account the interaction between the pore fluids and the solid phase of the porous material through viscous dissipation. In such unsaturated cases, the dispersion equations of Rayleigh and Love waves are derived respectively. Two situations for the Love waves are discussed in detail: (a) an elastic layer lying over an unsaturated porous half-space and (b) an unsaturated porous layer lying over an elastic half-space. The wave analysis indicates that, to the three compressional waves discovered in the unsaturated porous medium, there also correspond three Rayleigh wave modes (R1, R2, and R3 waves) propagating along its free surface. The numerical results demonstrate a significant dependence of wave velocities and attenuation coefficients of the Rayleigh and Love waves on the saturation degree, excitation frequency and intrinsic permeability. The cut-off frequency of the high order mode of Love waves is also found to be dependent on the saturation degree.     

Elastic Waves in Swelling Porous Media

Time harmonic waves in a swelling porous elastic medium of infinite extent and consisting of solid, liquid and gas phases have been studied. Employing Eringen’s theory of swelling porous media, it has been shown that there exist three dilatational and two shear waves propagating with distinct velocities. The velocities of these waves are found to be frequency dependent and complex valued, showing that the waves are attenuating in nature. Here, the appearance of an additional shear wave is new and arises due to swelling phenomena of the medium, which disappears in the absence of swelling. The reflection phenomenon of an incident dilatational wave from a stress-free plane boundary of a porous elastic half-space has been investigated for two types of boundary surfaces: (i) surface having open pores and (ii) surface having sealed pores. Using appropriate boundary conditions for these boundary surfaces, the equations giving the reflection coefficients corresponding to various reflected waves are presented. Numerical computations are performed for a specific model consisting of sandstone, water and carbon dioxide as solid, liquid and gas phases, respectively, of the porous medium. The variations of phase speeds and their corresponding attenuation coefficients are depicted against frequency parameter for all the existing waves. The variations of reflection coefficients and corresponding energy ratios against the angle of incidence are also computed and depicted graphically. It has been shown that in a limiting case, Eringen’s theory of swelling porous media reduces to Tuncay and Corapcioglu theory of porous media containing two immiscible fluids. The various numerical results under these two theories have been compared graphically.     

Seismic Wave Propagation in Composite Elastic Media

It has been known since the time of Biot–Gassman theory (Biot, J Acoust Soc Am 28:168–178, 1956, Gassmann, Naturf Ges Zurich 96:1–24, 1951) that additional seismic waves are predicted by a multicomponent theory. It is shown in this article that if the second or third phase is also an elastic medium then multiple p and s waves are predicted. Futhermore, since viscous dissipation no longer appears as an attenuation mechanism and the media are perfectly elastic, these waves propagate without attenuation. As well, these additional elastic waves contain information about the coupling of the elastic solids at the pore scale. Attempts to model such a medium as a single elastic solid causes this additional information to be misinterpreted. In the limit as the shear modulus of one of the solids tends to zero, it is shown that the equations of motion become identical to the equations of motion for a fluid filled porous medium when the viscosity of the fluid becomes zero. In this limit, an additional dilatational wave is predicted, which moves the fluid though the porous matrix much similar to a heart pumping blood through a body. This allows for a connection with studies which have been done on fluid-filled porous media (Spanos, 2002).     

Reflection and transmission of elastic waves at an elastic/porous solid saturated by two immiscible fluids

Wave propagation in a porous elastic medium saturated by two immiscible fluids is investigated. It is shown that there exist three dilatational waves and one transverse wave propagating with different velocities. It is found that the velocities of all the three longitudinal waves are influenced by the capillary pressure, while the velocity of transverse wave does not at all. The problem of reflection and refraction phenomena due to longitudinal and transverse wave incident obliquely at a plane interface between uniform elastic solid half-space and porous elastic half-space saturated by two immiscible fluids has been analyzed. The amplitude ratios of various reflected and refracted waves are found to be continuous functions of the angle of incidence. Expression of energy ratios of various reflected and refracted waves are derived in closed form. The amplitude ratios and energy ratios have been computed numerically for a particular model and the results obtained are depicted graphically. It is verified that during transmission there is no dissipation of energy at the interface. Some particular cases have also been reduced from the present formulation.     

Decoupling coefficients of dilatational wave for Biot’s dynamic equation and its Green’s functions in frequency domain

Green’s functions for Biot’s dynamic equation in the frequency domain can be a highly useful tool for the investigation of dynamic responses of a saturated porous medium. Its applications are found in soil dynamics, seismology, earthquake engineering, rock mechanics, geophysics, and acoustics. However, the mathematical work for deriving it can be daunting. Green’s functions have been presented utilizing an analogy between the dynamic thermoelasticity and the dynamic poroelasticity in the frequency domain using the u-p formulation. In this work, a special term “decoupling coefficient” for the decomposition of the fast and slow dilatational waves is proposed and expressed to present a new methodology for deriving the poroelastodynamic Green’s functions. The correctness of the solution is demonstrated by numerically comparing the current solution with Cheng’s previous solution. The separation of the two waves in the present methodology allows the more accurate evaluation of Green’s functions, particularly the solution of the slow dilatational wave. This can be advantageous for the numerical implementation of the boundary element method (BEM) and other applications.     

Seismic Reflection from an Interface Between an Elastic Solid and a Fractured Porous Medium with Partial Saturation

The theory of Tuncay and Corapcioglu (Transp Porous Media 23:237–258, 1996a) has been employed to investigate the possibility of plane wave propagation in a fractured porous medium containing two immiscible fluids. Solid phase of the porous medium is assumed to be linearly elastic, isotropic and the fractures are assumed to be distributed isotropically throughout the medium. It has been shown that there can exist four compressional waves and one rotational wave. The phase speeds of these waves are found to be affected by the presence of fractures, in general. Of the four compressional waves, one arises due to the presence of fractures in the medium and the remaining three are those encountered by Tuncay and Corapcioglu (J Appl Mech 64:313–319, 1997). Reflection and transmission phenomena at a plane interface between a uniform elastic half-space and a fractured porous half-space containing two immiscible fluids, are analyzed due to incidence of plane longitudinal/transverse wave from uniform elastic half-space. Variation of modulus of amplitude and energy ratios with the angle of incidence are computed numerically by taking the elastic half-space as granite and the fractured porous half-space as sandstone material containing non-viscous wetting and non-wetting fluid phases. The results obtained in case of porous half-space with fractures, are compared graphically with those in case of porous half-space without fractures. It is found that the presence of fractures in the porous half-space do affect the reflection/transmission of waves, which is responsible for raising the reflection and lowering the transmission coefficients.     

Linear dynamic model for porous media saturated by two immiscible fluids

A linear isothermal dynamic model for a porous medium saturated by two immiscible fluids is developed in the paper. In contrast to the mixture theory, phase separation is avoided by introducing one energy for the porous medium. It is an important advantage of the model based on one energy approach that it can account for the couplings between the phases. The volume fraction of each phase is characterized by the porosity of the porous medium and the saturation of the wetting phase. The mass and momentum balance equations are constructed according to the generalized mixture theory. Constitutive relations for the stress, pore pressure are derived from the free energy function. A capillary pressure relaxation model characterizing one attenuation mechanism of the two-fluid saturated porous medium is introduced under the constraint of the entropy inequality. In order to describe the momentum interaction between the fluids and the solid, a frequency independent drag force model is introduced. The details of parameter estimation are discussed in the paper. It is demonstrated that all the material parameters in our model can be calculated by the phenomenological parameters, which are measurable. The equations of motion in the frequency domain are obtained in terms of the Fourier transformation. In terms of the equations of motion in the frequency domain, the wave velocities and the attenuations for three P waves and one S wave are calculated. The influences of the capillary pressure relaxation coefficient and the saturation of the wetting phase on the velocities and attenuation coefficients for the four wave modes are discussed in the numerical examples.     

Effect of rigid boundary on propagation of torsional surface waves in porous elastic layer

The paper presents the effect of a rigid boundary on the propagation of torsional surface waves in a porous elastic layer over a porous elastic half-space using the mechanics of the medium derived by Cowin and Nunziato (Cowin, S. C. and Nunziato, J. W. Linear elastic materials with voids. Journal of Elasticity, 13(2), 125–147 (1983)). The velocity equation is derived, and the results are discussed. It is observed that there may be two torsional surface wave fronts in the medium whereas three wave fronts of torsional surface waves in the absence of the rigid boundary plane given by Dey et al. (Dey, S., Gupta, S., Gupta, A. K., Kar, S. K., and De, P. K. Propagation of torsional surface waves in an elastic layer with void pores over an elastic half-space with void pores. Tamkang Journal of Science and Engineering, 6(4), 241–249 (2003)). The results also reveal that in the porous layer, the Love wave is also available along with the torsional surface waves. It is remarkable that the phase speed of the Love wave in a porous layer with a rigid surface is different from that in a porous layer with a free surface. The torsional waves are observed to be dispersive in nature, and the velocity decreases as the oscillation frequency increases.     

Non-linear Evolution of P-waves in Viscous–Elastic Granular Saturated Media

The Frenkel–Biot P-wave of the first type is a seismic longitudinal wave observed in rocks fully saturated with oil, water or high-pressure gas. The P-wave of the second type is observed in unsaturated soils and other porous media saturated with gas of low pressure. Their models include properties of the skeleton, that is, its elastic modules and its own viscosity. If the non-linear terms are accounted for, the asymptotic analysis, usual for weak non-linear waves, might be applied to get the wave spectrum evolution. The wetness of grains contacts in soils and such components of oil as tars or bitumen, which attached to the skeleton, can be described by generalized viscous–elastic stress–strain connections. The latter are nominated in such a way that creates the narrow frequency interval of wave of negative dissipation where the non-linear terms begin to play the main role besides the neutral stability for waves of zero wave number. The corresponding case, relevant to single continuum model, was analyzed in the literature. Here it is shown that the interpenetrating continua with interaction of the Darcy type provide the dissipation sink in the wave evolution equation. This generalization, (Tribelsky, M.I.: Phys. Rev. Lett. (2007, submitted)), can stabilize the asymptotic solution of the evolution equation, where the dispersion terms are omitted. The asymptotic solution of the equation is invariant to initial conditions and it means a transformation of initial wave spectra to unique one while wave is spreading in the viscous–elastic medium under consideration. This explains the phenomenon, observed in wave tests at marine beach, when any dynamics action (impact, explosion, and ultrasound action) created at some distance a wave of a single frequency (~25 Hz).     

Wave propagation in transversely isotropic porous piezoelectric materials

Wave propagation in porous piezoelectric material (PPM), having crystal symmetry 6 mm, is studied analytically. Christoffel equation is derived for the propagation of plane harmonic waves in such a medium. The roots of this equation give four complex wave velocities which can propagate in such materials. The phase velocities of propagation and the attenuation quality factors of all these waves are described in terms of complex wave velocities. Phase velocities and attenuation of the waves in PPM depend on the phase direction. Numerical results are computed for the PPM BaTiO₃. The variation of phase velocity and attenuation quality factor with phase direction, porosity and the wave frequency is studied. The effects of anisotropy and piezoelectric coupling are also studied. The phase velocities of two quasi dilatational waves and one quasi shear waves get affected due to piezoelectric coupling while that of type 2 quasi shear wave remain unaffected. The phase velocities of all the four waves show non-dispersive behavior after certain critical high frequency. The phase velocity of all waves decreases with porosity while attenuation of respective waves increases with porosity of the medium. The characteristic curves, including slowness curves, velocity curves, and the attenuation curves, are also studied in this paper.     

Random wave propagation in a viscoelastic layered half space

An extremely efficient and accurate solution method is presented for the propagation of stationary random waves in a viscoelastic, transversely isotropic and stratified half space. The efficiency and accuracy are obtained by using the pseudo excitation method (PEM) with the precise integration method (PIM). The solid is multi-layered and located above a semi-infinite space. The excitation sources form a random field which is stationary in the time domain. PEM is used to transform the random wave equation into deterministic equations. In the frequency-wavenumber domain, these equations are ordinary differential equations which can be solved precisely by using PIM. The power spectral densities (PSDs) and the variances of the ground responses can then be computed. The paper presents the full theory and gives results for instructive examples. The comparison between the analytical solutions and the numerical results confirms that the algorithm presented in this paper has exceptionally high precision. In addition, the numerical results presented show that: surface waves are very important for the wave propagation problem discussed; the ground displacement PSDs and variances are significant over bigger regions in the spatial domain when surface waves exist; and as the depth of the source increases the ground displacement PSDs decrease and the regions over which they have significant effect become progressively more restricted to low frequencies while becoming more widely distributed in the spatial domain.     

Dispersion Waves of Two Fluids in a Porous Medium

The dispersion of two fluids in a porous medium is analyzed as a wave process. The wave equations are derived, and for plane wave solutions a wave number versus frequency dispersion relation is obtained. Suitable choices for the saturation dependence of terms in the equations of motion and the dynamic pressure difference equation lead to physical solutions.     

Viscous fluid flow induced by rotational-oscillatory motion of a porous sphere

Viscous fluid flow induced by rotational-oscillatorymotion of a porous sphere submerged in the fluid is determined. The Darcy formula for the viscous medium drag is supplementedwith a term that allows for the medium motion. The medium motion is also included in the boundary conditions. Exact analytical solutions are obtained for the time-dependent Brinkman equation in the region inside the sphere and for the Navier–Stokes equations outside the body. The existence of internal transverse waves in the fluid is shown; in these waves the velocity is perpendicular to the wave propagation direction. The waves are standing inside the sphere and traveling outside of it. The particular cases of low and high oscillation frequencies are considered.     

Attenuated Wave Field in Fluid-Saturated Porous Medium with Excitations of Multiple Sources

This research addresses the investigation of an elastic wave field in a homogeneous and isotropic porous medium which is fully saturated by a Newtonian viscous fluid. A new methodology is developed for describing the wave field in the medium excited by multiple energy sources. To quantify the relative displacements between the fluid and solid of the medium, the governing equations of the elastic wave propagation are derived in the form of displacements specially. The velocities and attenuation of the waves are considered as functions of viscosity and frequency. Making use of the Hankel function and the moving-coordinate method, a model of the wave motion with multiple cylindrical wave sources is built. Making use of the model established in this research, the relative displacement between the fluid and the solid can be quantified, and the wave field in the porous media can then be determined with the given energy sources. Numerical simulations of cylindrical waves from multiple energy sources propagating in the porous medium saturated by viscous fluid are performed for demonstrating the practicability of the model developed.     

Time harmonic waves in thermoelastic material with microtemperatures

The present study deals with the propagation of time harmonic waves in an infinite thermoelastic medium with microtemperatures within the context of the theory developed by Iesan and Quintanilla (2000). There exist three sets of coupled dilatational waves and a shear wave propagating at distinct speeds. Each set of coupled dilatational waves consists of displacement, micro and macrotemperature fields, while the lone shear wave is no different from that exist in classical elasticity. The reflection phenomenon of these waves from a plane boundary of a thermoelastic half space has been investigated.     

Inhomogeneous plane waves in compressible viscous fluids

The propagation of inhomogeneous plane waves in a compressible viscous fluid is considered. The frequency and the slowness vector are both allowed to be complex. There are seen to be two types of solutions: (a) two transverse waves, which involve no density or pressure fluctuations, (b) a longitudinal wave, which involves no fluctuations in vorticity. For each type, a propagation condition is obtained giving the (complex) squared length of the slowness vector as a function of frequency. Each depends also on the viscosities. It is seen how to recover the incompressible case as the limit in which the inviscid acoustic wave speed tends to infinity. Each wave is shown to be linearly stable for real frequencies. These waves are attenuated in space and time but nevertheless it is possible to define constant weighted mean values (over a cycle of the propagating part of the wave) of the energy density, energy flux and dissipation. The energy-dissipation equation and the propagation conditions are used to derive relationships between these constant weighted means, some of which are generalizations to compressible fluids of previously known results for incompressible fluids. Explicit expressions in terms of frequency are given for the weighted means.     

Antisymmetric waves in an elastic layer with free surfaces

The dispersion of antisymmetric waves in a fluid-saturated porous elastic layer with free surfaces is studied. Attenuation effects are ignored. Cases with open-pore and closed-pore surface boundary conditions are considered. There are finite numbers of propagating waves and infinite numbers of waves with complex and imaginary wave numbers in the porous elastic layer. The dispersion is a function of the parameters of the porous elastic layer and of the type of wave symmetry. Institute of Hydromechanics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev. Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika, Vol. 35, No. 10, pp. 27–36, October, 1999.     

Propagation of Transient Acoustic Waves in Layered Porous Media: Fractional Equations for the Scattering Operators

Acoustic waves scattering from a rigid air-saturated porous medium is studied in the time domain. The medium is one dimensional and its physical parameters are depth dependent, i.e., the medium is layered. The loss and dispersion properties of the medium are due to the fluid-structure interaction induced by wave propagation. They are modeled by generalized susceptibility functions which express the memory effects in the propagation process. The wave equation is then a fractional telegraphist’s equation. The two relevant quantities are the scattering operators—transmission and reflection operators—which give the scattered fields from the incident wave. They are obtained from Volterra equations which are fractional equations for the scattering operators.     

On attenuation of free and forced waves in an infinitely long visco-elastic layer of a constant thickness

The conventional concepts of a loss factor and a complex-valued elastic module are used to study wave attenuation in a visco-elastic layer. The hierarchy of reduced order models is employed to assess attenuation levels of free and forced waves in various situations. First, the free waves are considered. In the low frequency limit, the attenuation of these waves is found to be in the excellent agreement with the existing knowledge. At high frequencies, predictions of the reduced order models fully agree with the solutions of exact Rayleigh–Lamb problem. Alternative excitation cases are considered for the forcing problem and a measure of the attenuation level is proposed and validated. The differences between two regimes, the low frequency one, when a waveguide supports only one propagating wave, and the high frequency one, when several waves are supported, are demonstrated and explained.     

Reflection and refraction of attenuated waves at boundary of elastic solid and porous solid saturated with two immiscible viscous fluids

The propagation of elastic waves is studied in a porous solid saturated with two immiscible viscous fluids.The propagation of three longitudinal waves is represented through three scalar potential functions.The lone transverse wave is presented by a vector potential function.The displacements of particles in different phases of the aggregate are defined in terms of these potential functions.It is shown that there exist three longitudinal waves and one transverse wave.The phenomena of reflection and refraction due to longitudinal and transverse waves at a plane interface between an elastic solid half-space and a porous solid half-space saturated with two immiscible viscous fluids are investigated.For the presence of viscosity in pore-fluids,the waves refracted to the porous medium attenuate in the direction normal to the interface.The ratios of the amplitudes of the reflected and refracted waves to that of the incident wave are calculated as a nonsingular system of linear algebraic equations.These amplitude ratios are used to further calculate the shares of different scattered waves in the energy of the incident wave.The modulus of the amplitude and the energy ratios with the angle of incidence are computed for a particular numerical model.The conservation of the energy across the interface is verified.The effects of variations in non-wet saturation of pores and frequencies on the energy partition are depicted graphically and discussed.