Some nonlinear effects on Love waves (Q1111059)

In this work we study the evolution of a narrow band packet of weakly nonlinear Love waves which propagate in an elastic layer of thickness h superimposed on an elastic half space. The elastic properties of the layer are assumed to be different from those of the half space. We show that the equations have solutions which represent propagating packets of Love waves and a nonlinear Schrödinger equation is derived for the envelopes. It is then shown by using known facts for the Schrödinger equation that solitary wave packets are formed for waves which are long compared with the depth of the layer. It is shown that various changes in stability are possible depending on the wave length of the carrier wave and the elastic parameter. This is much a richer behavior than that observed for deep and shallow water waves in homogeneous fluids. The methods used to solve this problem are very similar to those used to study weakly nonlinear waves in water such as Stokes waves [\textit{G. B. Whitham}, Linear and nonlinear waves (1974; Zbl 0373.76001)], but the manipulations are more involved due to the fact that the displacement is a vector. Besides the algebraic complexity there are several differences between the fluid and the solid cases. The most important one is the fact that in the elastic waves the mean value of the displacement does not act as a stabilizing mechanism for shallow layers and therefore the long waves will be unstable to modulations for all materials. The first and second section are devoted to the derivation of the nonlinear equations of motion and the formulation of the problem. The third section is the core of the paper; there we solve the perturbation equations to third order in the wave amplitude to obtain the envelope equation. In the fourth section we provide the relevant information on the Schrödinger equation and discuss its consequence for the Love waves. Some of the detailed calculations are given in the appendix.