Reflection of plane waves from the free surface of a hard sphere-filled elastic metacomposite

Abstract

We use an effective medium model to study the problem of reflection of plane waves from the free surface of a half-space occupied by an elastic particulate metacomposite. This problem has received little attention in the recent literature despite its significance from both practical and theoretical points of view. Classical formulas for the reflection angles and amplitudes of the reflected waves for a homogeneous elastic half-space with no wave attenuation are extended to a particulate metacomposite half-space with wave attenuation. We also include a detailed discussion concerning the reflected plane shear wave and surface compressional wave in the case of an incident shear wave propagating at an incident angle smaller than the critical angle. The efficiency and accuracy of the model are demonstrated via detailed comparisons between the predicted phase velocity and attenuation coefficient of plane waves in an (infinite) entire space and the corresponding results available in the literature. The implications of our results on the reflection of plane waves from the free surface of a hard sphere-filled elastic metacomposite are discussed. We mention that a quantitative validation of our results cannot be made here as a result of the lack of availability of established data in the existing literature.