Scattering of elastic waves by an arbitrary small imperfection in the surface of a half-space

This paper, the first of two articles, is concerned with the scattering of elastic waves by arbitrary surface-breaking or near surface defects in an isotropic half-plane. We present an analytical solution, by the method of matched asymptotic expansions, when the parameter ε, which is the ratio of a typical length scale of the imperfection to the incident radiation's wavelength, is small. The problem is formulated for a general class of small defects, including cracks, surface bumps and inclusions, and for arbitrary incident waves. As a straightforward example of the asymptotic scheme we specialize the defect to a two-dimensional circular void or protrusion, which breaks the free surface, and assume Rayleigh wave excitation ; this inner problem is exactly solvable by conformal mapping methods. The displacement field is found uniformly to leading order in ε, and the Rayleigh waves which are scattered by the crack are explicitly determined. In the second article we use the method given here to tackle the important problem of an inclined edge-crack. In that work we show that the scattered field can be found to any asymptotic order in a straightforward manner, and in particular the Rayleigh wave coefficients are given to O(ε2). © 1992.