Surface waves and instabilities

Summary

Most biological materials (and industrial) are reinforced with stiff fibres or are under tension. I figure out how these mechanisms influence elastic surface waves and the formation of surface wrinkles. The main reasons to do this are

  • will give us greater control over surface waves or forming textured surfaces (using surface wrinkles).
  • use these surface waves and surface wrinkles to measure biological materials.

Point impact on a surface

When an anisotropic solid is hit at one point, the solid will react by sending waves out in all directions. Because the solid is anisotropic, these waves travel at different speeds in different directions, which creates unique patterns.

illustrates how to calculate the surface wave front (red), after one second, from the surface wave speed (green). That is, the length of v is equal to the speed of the surface wave travelling in the v direction. The blue shading shows how overlapping plane waves form the wave front.
illustrates how overlapping body waves (blue) creates the resulting wave front (red).

The work I have done on plane surface waves can be used to predict the result of these point impacts, among other applications.

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Artur L Gower
Lecturer in Dynamics

Art Gower is a lecturer at the University of Sheffield and part of the Dynamics group. He uses maths to understand waves (sound and light) in materials. Sometimes computers show him that his maths is wrong.

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