Abstract

The scattering of a surface wave by a pinned edge dislocation in a semi-infinite, homogeneous, isotropic, three-dimensional elastic solid is investigated analytically and numerically. An incident wave excites the dislocation that responds by oscillating as a string endowed with mass, line tension, and damping. The oscillations of the stringlike dislocation generate secondary ("scattered") elastic waves that are the primary object of interest in this study. The back reaction of the re-emitted waves on the dislocation dynamics is neglected, but the wavelength of the radiation is allowed to be large, comparable, or small compared to the length of the dislocation. In view of recent experimental visualizations of these phenomena, we focus particularly on the field behavior at the free surface near the dislocation, and not just on the far field. For the same reason, it is the vertical component of displacement at the free surface that is studied in detail. An efficient numerical procedure for the computation of the appropriate components of the Green's function, using a Filon quadrature for the integration of rapidly oscillating functions, is developed. The numerics is validated with known analytical expressions. The secondary radiation generated by the response of the dislocation to the incident wave is also calculated numerically, and the results are also validated by comparing them with the analytical expressions that can be obtained when the radiation wavelength is very long compared to dislocation length. The interference pattern between incident wave and secondary wave that is generated at the free surface is studied in detail and found to depend strongly not only on wavelength and dislocation geometry (length and orientation) but also on dislocation depth, with the response of the dislocation being a particularly sensitive function of such depth. Results are compared with recent experiments of Shilo and Zolotoyabko [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 115506 (2003)] that report visualizations of the surface-wave-dislocation interaction using stroboscopic x-ray imaging. A satisfactory agreement is found. Dislocation velocities of a few percent of the speed of sound and viscosity coefficients of about 10-5 Pa s are inferred. © 2007 The American Physical Society.