Transient waves in viscoelastic cylindrical layered media. (Q1867088)

The authors set up the problem of transient wave propagation in layered cylindrical medium in the presence of relaxation terms modeling viscoelastic effects. The stress distribution on the most inner surface is prescribed, while the most outer surface is assumed to be either fixed or stress-free. After taking the Fourier transform over the polar angle, the governing equations are written as a first-order system of PDEs which is solved using the method of characteristics. The numerical inversion of the transformed solution is the last step in obtaining the solution of the problem. The scheme is applied to a number of examples.