Attenuation dispersion of Love waves in a two-layered half space

The attenuation of dispersive Love waves in an anelastic two-layered half space and in a simple symmetric homogeneous three-layered model has been investigated by introducing the complex propagation functions into the known explicit dispersion relation. A frequency-dependent attenuation relation is explicitly given assuming that the media quality factors are constant. The resultant quality factor of Love waves depends not only on the frequency, but also on the layer depth, via media quality factors. The attenuation coefficient of the Love waves becomes therefore a non-linear function of the frequency. The result is consistent with the results given in the literature on seismology and in-seam seismics. It is known that the spectral ratio method can only be used to estimate the frequency-independent quality factor. Therefore, a modification of the spectral ratio method is presented to invert the frequency-dependent quality factor of Love-waves. The modification facilitates investigations of frequency-dependent quality of the medium over previous methods.