On the existence of Rayleigh waves with full impedance boundary condition

The existence of Rayleigh waves (propagating in isotropic elastic half-spaces) with the tangential and normal impedance boundary conditions was investigated. It has been shown that for the tangential impedance boundary condition (TIBC), there always exists a unique Rayleigh wave, while for the normal impedance boundary condition (NIBC), there exists a domain (of impedance and material parameters) in which exactly one Rayleigh wave is possible and outside this domain a Rayleigh wave is impossible. In this paper, we consider the existence of Rayleigh waves with the full impedance boundary condition (FIBC) that contains both TIBC and NIBC. It is shown that the existence picture of Rayleigh waves for this general case is more complicated. It contains domain for which exactly one Rayleigh wave exists, domain where a Rayleigh wave is impossible, and domain for which all three possibilities may occur: two Rayleigh waves exist, one Rayleigh wave exists, and no Rayleigh wave exists at all. The obtained existence results recover the existence results established previously for the cases of TIBC and NIBC. The formulas for the Rayleigh wave velocity are derived. As these formulas are totally explicit, they are very useful in various practical applications, especially in the non-destructive evaluation of the mechanical properties of structures. In order to establish the existence results and derive formulas for the Rayleigh wave velocity, the complex function method, which is based on the Cauchy-type integrals, is employed.