Supershear rayleigh waves at a soft interface

We report on the experimental observation of waves at a liquid foam surface propagating faster than the bulk shear waves. The existence of such waves has long been debated, but the recent observation of supershear events in a geophysical context has inspired us to search for their existence in a mod...

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Autores principales: Le Goff, A., Cobelli, P., Lagubeau, G.
Formato: JOUR
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Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_00319007_v110_n23_p_LeGoff
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Sumario:We report on the experimental observation of waves at a liquid foam surface propagating faster than the bulk shear waves. The existence of such waves has long been debated, but the recent observation of supershear events in a geophysical context has inspired us to search for their existence in a model viscoelastic system. An optimized fast profilometry technique allows us to observe on a liquid foam surface the waves triggered by the impact of a projectile. At high impact velocity, we show that the expected subshear Rayleigh waves are accompanied by faster surface waves that can be identified as supershear Rayleigh waves. © 2013 American Physical Society.