Keele Research Repository

<jats:p>This paper deals with the Rayleigh wave, propagating on a nonlocally elastic, linearly isotropic half-space, excited by a prescribed surface loading. The consideration develops the methodology of hyperbolic–elliptic models for Rayleigh and Rayleigh-type waves, and relies on the effective boundary conditions formulated recently, accounting for the crucial contributions of the nonlocal boundary layer. A slow-time perturbation scheme is established, leading to the reduced model for the Rayleigh wave field, comprised of a singularly perturbed hyperbolic equation for the longitudinal wave potential on the surface, acting as a boundary condition for the elliptic equation governing the decay over the interior. An equivalent alternative formulation involving a pseudo-differential operator acting on the loading terms, with parametric dependence on the depth coordinate, is also presented.</jats:p>