Reflection of qP waves from an orthotropic layer overlying an orthotropic half-space: Explicit formulas for the reflection coefficients

Abstract

There has been a considerable number of studies on the reflection and transmission of plane waves in anisotropic elastic half-spaces. However, the obtained formulas of the reflection and transmission coefficients are implicit, and the numbers of reflected and transmitted waves are undetermined. In this paper, the reflection of qP waves from an orthotropic elastic layer overlying an orthotropic elastic half-space is considered. It has been proved that an incident qP wave always creates two reflected waves, one qP wave and one qSV wave, and the reflection angle of the reflected qP wave is equal to the incident angle. Based on this fact, formulas for the reflection coefficients have been derived by using the transfer matrix method along with the effective boundary condition technique. It should be noted that, different from the previously obtained implicit formulas, these formulas are totally explicit functions of the incident angle, the (dimensionless) layer thickness and the material parameters of the half-space and the layer. Since the obtained formulas are totally explicit, they will be useful in various practical applications, especially in nondestructively evaluating the mechanical properties of deposited layers.