INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL AND ANALYTICAL METHODS IN GEOMECHANICS Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech., 2006; 30:455–487 Published online 8 December 2005 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/nag.485 Plane SH-waves at a corrugated interface between two dissimilar perfectly conducting self-reinforced elastic half-spaces S. K. Tomar n,y and Sanasam Sarat Singh Department of Mathematics, Panjab University, Chandigarh 160 014, India SUMMARY In this paper, we have attempted a problem of reflection and refraction of plane harmonic SH-wave at a corrugated interface between two different perfectly conducting self-reinforced elastic half-spaces. Rayleigh’s method is employed to find out the expressions of reflection and refraction coefficients for first- and second-order approximation of the corrugation. The expressions of these coefficients show that they depend on the properties of half-spaces, angle of incidence, frequency of the incident wave and are strongly influenced by the corrugation of the interface. Numerical computations are performed for a particular model having special type of interface and the variation of these coefficients are depicted graphically against the angles of incidence, frequency parameter, corrugation parameter at different values of reinforcement parameters. Results of some earlier works are reduced as a particular case of this formulation. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: SH-wave; reflection; refraction; corrugation; frequency; self-reinforcement; Rayleigh’s method 1. INTRODUCTION The study of propagation of elastic waves and their reflection and refraction from boundaries are very important in the fields such as engineering, geophysics and seismology, etc. These studies provide a lot of information and the people working in the pertinent field use them for experimental purposes and further research. In fact, elastic waves carry a lot of information about the medium through which they travel. Whenever these waves come across a discontinuity of the medium, the phenomena of reflection and refraction takes place and these reflected and refracted waves are not only influenced by the characteristics of the media, but also by the shape of the interface (discontinuity) and frequency of the incident wave. In particular, the seismic signals propagating through the interior of the Earth are very helpful in exploration of valuable materials buried and also provide us better knowledge about the constitution of the Earth. Keeping in view the importance of the problem of reflection and refraction of elastic waves from Contract/grant sponsor: Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi; contract/grant number: 25(0134)/04/ EMR-II Received 15 May 2005 Revised 7 September 2005 Accepted 19 September 2005 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. y E-mail: sktomar@yahoo.com n Correspondence to: S. K. Tomar, Department of Mathematics, Panjab University, Chandigarh 160 014, India.