Michael J. S. Lowe

The phenomenon of Rayleigh wave attenuation due to surface roughness has been well studied theoretically in the literature. Three scattering regimes describing it have been identified—the Rayleigh (long wavelength), stochastic (medium wavelength), and geometric (short wavelength)—with the attenuation coefficient exhibiting a different behavior in each. Here, in an extension to our previous work, we gain further insight with regard to the existing theory, in three dimensions, using finite element (FE) modeling, under a unified approach, where the same FE modeling techniques are used regardless of the scattering regime. We demonstrate good agreement between our FE results and the theory in all scattering regimes. Additionally, following this demonstration, we extend the results to cases that lie outside the limits of validity of the theory.