Mechanical stress alters the velocity of acoustic waves, a phenomenon known
as AE (acoustoelastic) effect, which is of particular importance for the w
ave propagation in layered heterostructures. In order to calculate the AE e
ffect of layered systems in the presence of stress we extended the transfer
-matrix method for acoustic wave propagation by considering the change of t
he density, the influence of residual stress, and the modification of the e
lastic stiffness tensor by residual strain and by third-order constants. Th
e generalized method is applied to the calculation of the angular dispersio
n of the AE effect for transverse bulk modes and surface acoustic waves on
the Ge(001) crystal cut. The AE effect is found to depend significantly on
the propagation direction and can even change si,on. The maximum velocity c
hange occurs for transversally polarized waves propagating parallel to the
[110] direction. For the layered Ge/Si(001) system the AE effect is investi
gated for Love modes propagating in the [100] and [110] directions. The AE
effect increases rapidly with increasing layer thickness and reaches almost
its maximum value when the wave is still penetrating into the unstressed s
ubstrate. For higher-order Love modes the increase of the AE effect is even
steeper and, furthermore, can reach higher values.