STRESS WAVES IN

BOUNDED ELASTIC
MEDIUM
BY
G.SAMSONU
17021D1917
TOPICS COVERED
• Introduction

• Defintion of Stress wave

• Wave propagation through soil medium

• 3-D Modeling of wave propagation through soil medium

INTRODUCTION
• For carrying out dynamic analysis, structural elements
made of materials viz., Reinforced Concrete (RC) and
steel can be idealized as discrete elements with quantifiable
stiffness and mass.

• When the dynamic load is applied to continuous medium

like soil, the deformation that takes place in the soil medium
causes stress waves.
 DEFINTION OF STRESS WAVE
• The deformation that takes place in the continuous medium
due the application of dynamic load on it(like soil medium)
the waves are generated due to the deformation of soil medium.
these waves are called stress waves.

• These stress waves are generated due to the deformation occurs in

the soil medium.
WAVE PROPAGATION THROUGH SOIL MEDIUM

• Propagation of stress waves through soil can be modelled

by either of these three methods.

1) stress waves in an elastic unbounded medium

2) stress waves in a longitudinal bar

3) stress waves in elastic half space

3-D Modeling of stress waves
through soil medium
• To understand the propagation of stress waves in infinite
elastic medium and bounded elastic medium equations of
motion can be written in terms of stresses.

• Let the normal and shear stresses acting on a soil element with
sides dx, dy and dz are x ,Y , Z and ĩxy ,ĩyz ,ĩzx as shown in Figure.
• writing the equations for normal, shearing strains in terms of partial
derivatives of displacements and linking the stresses and strains by
Hook’s law with material constants viz.,young’s modulus (E), shear
modulus (G), bulk modulus( λ ) and poisson’s ratio ( μ ). where ρ is
the mass per unit volume or the density
• Similarly by getting the equation of motion in other components and
differentiating with respect to x, y and z and by adding Equation (5)
which relates volumetric strain (ε) and primary wave velocity (vp ) of
soil medium is obtained.
PROPAGATION OF STRESS WAVES
• The propagation of stress waves in a bounded elastic medium is
similar to Equation (5) and can be expressed as
CONTINUES….
• For shear waves or S waves the equation of motion in X-direction
reduces to the following form.
• P waves does not cause any rotation and s waves does not cause any
volume change.
• The ratio of p wave velocity to s wave velocity is given by
THANK YOU