Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea ISSN:1229-3059(Print) 2287-2302(Online) 한국전산구조공학회 논문집

The wave-propagation phenomenon in an infinite medium has been used to describe the physics in many fields of engineering and natural science. Analytical or numerical methods have been developed to obtain solutions to problems related to the wave-propagation phenomenon. Energy radiation into infinite regions must be accurately considered for accurate solutions to these problems; hence, various numerical and mechanical models as well as boundary conditions have been developed. This paper proposes a new boundary condition that can be applied to scalar-wave or horizontally-polarized shear-wave (or SH-wave) propagation problems in layered waveguides. A governing equation is obtained for the SH waves by applying finite-element discretization in the vertical direction of the waveguide and subsequently modified to derive the boundary condition for the infinite region of the waveguide. Using the orthogonality of the eigenmodes for the SH waves in a layered waveguide, the new boundary condition is shown to be equivalent to the existing root-finding absorbing boundary condition; further, the accuracy is shown to increase with the degree of the new boundary condition, and its stability can be proven. The accuracy and stability are then demonstrated by applying the proposed boundary condition to wave-propagation problems in layered waveguides.