Identification of shear wave parameters of viscoelastic solids by laboratory measurements of Stoneley-Scholte waves

This paper deals with the problem of viscoelastic solid characterization by acoustical means and in particular with the recovery of the shear wave par ameters. It has been previously shown, in the Underwater Acoustics field, t hat the shear wave parameters of the sea floor could be recovered by using inverse techniques applied to propagation characteristics of interface wave s such as Stoneley-Scholte waves, which can propagate in water/sediment con figurations.The goal of the study presented in the paper is then to test mo dels, commonly used for seabed identification, on media whose properties ar e well-controlled by laboratory tank experiments, contrary to in situ botto ms. It is shown that the Viscoelastic medium parameters can also be identif ied from the characteristics of interface waves, generated experimentally i n laboratory on very attenuating synthetic materials. The paper presents re sults about the estimated shear wave parameters obtained from both numerica l and experimental data by applying Brent's method on the characteristics o f the interface waves. The observation and the discussion of differences be tween theoretical and experimental results are the goal of the paper. The s tudy presented here validates the forward model previously developed and it can be considered as a first step towards the direction of acoustic classi fication of sea bottoms.