Scattering of Elastic Waves by an Alluvial Valley

Plane strain model for scattering of steady state plane waves by an elastic alluvial valley of arbitrary shape is presented. The valley is presumed to be perfectly bonded to a linearly homogeneous and isotropic half space. Total displacement and stress fields are evaluated along the interface between the alluvial valey and elastic half space using the source method. The results are compared with known exact solutions for simple geometries to determine the accuracy of the proposed method. It was found that the proposed method provides very good results. As an illustrative example diffraction of a plane P-wave by an elastic semi-elliptical alluvial valley is presented in detail.