NONLINEAR ENERGY TRANSFER IN ELASTIC WAVES
If an elastic pulse of finite amplitude propagates through a solid, the energy originally associated with one frequency is partially transferred to other frequencies. This transfer can lead, for lossless compressive pulses, to the formation of a shock wave. Changes of entropy occur in steady shocks only in terms beginning with third order in the compression, and hence a perturbation treatment neglecting heat conduction is valid to second order. The one‐dimensional mass and momentum conversation equations are solved to second order, and the solutions are used to study energy transfer. Generally speaking, transfer occurs from lows to highs, leading to apparent attentuation of frequencies in the seismic range. A drop in energy of low frequencies might occur even if the only apparent loss mechanism is high frequency scattering. Formulas are developed giving the apparent attenuation over propagation distances or oscillation times small enough that perturbation treatment remains valid. It appears that this process could be important as a loss mechanism at low frequencies if initial pulses are sufficiently sharp, or if initial free oscillations have sufficiently large high‐frequency content.