Keele Research Repository

This study is concerned with analysis of the Rayleigh wave field in a 3D isotropic elastic half‐space subject to in‐plane surface loading. The approach relies on the slow time perturbation of the general representation for the Rayleigh wave eigensolutions in terms of harmonic functions. The resulting hyperbolic‐elliptic formulation allows decomposition of the original vector problem of 3D elasticity into a sequence of scalar Dirichlet and Neumann problems for the Laplace equation. The boundary conditions for these are specified through a 2D hyperbolic equation. An example of an impulse tangential load illustrates the efficiency of the derived asymptotic formulation, with the results expressed in terms of elementary functions.