Dispersion Analysis of Three-Dimensional Elastic Wave Propagation in Transversely Isotropic Media Using Optimally Blended Spectral-Element Method

Abstract

The accuracy of the optimally blended spectral-element method for wave propagation in a homogeneous transversely isotropic elastic medium was investigated. A nonstandard quadrature rule obtained by combining Gauss quadrature rule and Gauss–Lobatto–Legendre quadrature rule was used to compute elementary matrixes. The mass and stiffness matrixes were represented as the triple tensor-product of elementary matrixes as second-order tensors. The solution of the eigenvalue problem representing the semidiscretized version of elastic wave equation for plane harmonic wave propagation was obtained using the Rayleigh quotient approximation technique. The resulting eigenvalues subsequently were used to estimate the phase and group velocity of three bulk waves. The variations of the errors in these velocities of the bulk waves with the number of grid points per wavelength were depicted graphically. These variations were shown for different polynomial orders and various angles of deviation from the symmetry axis. The effect of a change in the order of time discretization on error variation also was shown. The solution obtained by the optimally blended spectral-element method was found to be more accurate than that from the classical spectral-element method for low-order polynomials. The improvement in solution accuracy was demonstrated through dispersion analysis.