THE 2-COMPONENT REPRESENTATION OF TIME-HARMONIC ELASTIC BODY WAVES INTHE HIGH-FREQUENCY AND INTERMEDIATE-FREQUENCY REGIMES

Propagation and diffraction of time-harmonic elastic body waves throug h homogeneous and isotropic materials is revisited. The two-component representation of body waves is given which is applicable in the high- and intermediate-frequency regimes when the family of rays is (i) reg ular or (ii) possesses an irregularity due to the presence of a wedge, an acoustic point source located on the boundary, simple caustic, or focal line. Both physical and mathematical description of the phenomen a under consideration is offered. The resulting expressions are asympt otic in character and easy to compute. They should prove useful in pro ducing algorithms for describing acoustic fields in homogeneous and is otropic materials with isolated defects and in providing benchmark cas es for testing numerical codes designed to solve elastic wave equation s in more complicated situations. (C) 1997 Acoustical Society of Ameri ca.