Isolation of plane shear wave using water saturated trench barrier

•The present paper has explored the propagation of normally and obliquely incident plane shear waves in a rectangular trench filled with water saturated soil sandwiched between anisotropic elastic media.•We have determined the amplitude ratios and the energy partition distribution of shear waves in the model.•The water saturated trench barrier demolishes the propagation of shear waves drastically.•The plane waves, because of the presence of barrier, do not make any hazards to the nearby structures.•The trench barriers can reduce the vibrations of a structure and the resulting internal forces significantly.

The article presents a theoretical investigation of the propagation of normally and obliquely incident plane shear waves past a rectangular trench filled up with water saturated soil sandwiched between anisotropic elastic media. The motivation for this work is due to the effectiveness of the isolation of waves by the in-filled rectangular trench. Unlike the most of the previous researchers, this model considers the soil–structure interaction effects and directly determines the influence of barrier in the form of in-filled trench on the mode of wave propagation. It is of interest to determine the reflection and transmission coefficients, and the energy partition distribution of shear waves in the in-filled rectangular trench showing the influence of barrier on the propagation of waves. An extensive parametric study through numerical computation is carried out to investigate the influence of the material properties of the in-filled trench and the amplitude ratios on shear waves. The in-filled trench barrier directly declines the intensity of waves significantly in such a way that the waves do not create any hazards to the nearby structures, if exists at all.