Propagation of plane waves in microstretch fluid

The propagation of plane harmonic waves are studied in a microstretch fluid medium. It is found that five basic waves can propagate at distinct speeds in an infinite linear homogeneous isotropic microstretch fluid. Out of these five waves, one is a longitudinal micro-rotational wave, two are coupled longitudinal waves and remaining two are coupled transverse waves. The longitudinal micro-rotational wave travels independently and is not influenced by the microstretching of the medium, while the coupled longitudinal waves arise due to the presence of microstretching and coupled transverse waves arise due to the presence of micro-rotation in the medium. Speed of propagation of all the waves are found to be complex valued and dispersive at low frequency, but almost non-dispersive at high frequency. Due to complex valued speeds of propagation, all the waves are attenuating but differently. Coupled sets of longitudinal waves reduce to a longitudinal wave of micropolar fluid in the absence of microstretching. Reflection phenomena of a set of coupled longitudinal waves incident obliquely at the free surface of a microstretch fluid half-space has been investigated. Closed formulae for the reflection coefficients are presented and computed numerically for a particular medium. The real and imaginary parts of the complex speeds of all the waves and their corresponding attenuation coefficients have also been studied numerically and depicted graphically against frequency parameter. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.