The effect of initial stress on the propagation of surface waves in a layered half-space

In this paper the propagation of small amplitude surface waves guided by a layer with a finite thickness on an incompressible half-space is studied. The layer and half-space are both assumed to be initially stressed. The combined effect of initial stress and finite deformation on the speed of Rayleigh waves is analyzed and illustrated graphically. With a suitable simple choice of constitutive law that includes initial stress, it is shown that in many cases, as is to be expected, the effect of a finite deformation (with an associated pre-stress) is very similar to that of an initial stress (without an accompanying finite deformation). However, by contrast, when the finite deformation and initial stress are considered together independently with a judicious choice of material parameters different features are found that do not appear in the separate finite deformation or initial stress situations on their own.