EFFECTS OF SHEAR ELASTICITY ON SEA-BED SCATTERING - NUMERICAL EXAMPLES

It is known that marine sediments can support both compressional and s hear waves. However, published work on scattering from irregular elast ic media has not examined the influence of shear on sea bed scattering in detail. A perturbation model previously developed by the authors f or joint roughness-volume scattering is used to study the effects of e lasticity for three sea bed types: sedimentary rock, sand with high sh ear speed, and sand with ''normal'' shear wave speed. Both bistatic an d monostatic cases are considered. For sedimentary rock it is found th at shear elasticity tends to increase the importance of volume scatter ing and decrease the importance of roughness scattering relative to th e fluid case. Shear effects are shown to be small for sands. (C) 1998 Acoustical Society of America.