JOURNAL OF SOUND AND VIBRATION Journal of Sound and Vibration 291 (2006) 764–778 Reflection of SV waves from the free surface of an elastic solid in generalized thermoelastic diffusion Baljeet Singh à Department of Mathematics, Government College, Sector-11, Chandigarh - 160 011, India Received 1 November 2004; received in revised form 14 March 2005; accepted 25 June 2005 Available online 24 August 2005 Abstract The governing equations for two-dimensional generalized thermoelastic diffusion in an elastic solid are solved. There exist three compressional waves and a shear vertical (SV) wave. The reflection phenomena of SV wave from the free surface of an elastic solid with generalized thermoelastic diffusion is considered. The closed-form expressions for the reflection coefficients for various reflected waves are obtained. These reflection coefficients are found to depend upon the angle of incidence of SV wave, thermoelastic diffusion parameter and other material constants. The numerical values of modulus of the reflection coefficients are presented graphically for different thermal and diffusion parameters. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Duhamel [1] and Neumann [2] introduced the theory of uncoupled thermoelasticity. There are two shortcomings of this theory. First, the fact that the mechanical state of the elastic body has no effect on the temperature, is not in accordance with true physical experiments. Second, the heat equation being parabolic predicts an infinite speed of propagation for the temperature, which is not physically admissible. Biot [3] developed the coupled theory of thermoelasticity which eliminates the first defect, but shares the second defect of uncoupled theory. In the classical theory of thermoelasticity, when an ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/jsvi 0022-460X/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jsv.2005.06.035 à Tel.: +9 11 723203140; fax: +9 11 662245675. E-mail address: baljeet@networkindia.net.