Pressure influence on elastic wave attenuation in polycrystalline materials

Traditionally, the acoustoelastic effect refers to the influence of stress in a solid on an elastic wave's phase velocity. Since the phase velocity can be represented by the real part of the complex wave number, a natural question arises regarding the effect of stress on the imaginary part or dissipation of the wave. In this article, the influence of pressure on the elastic wave's attenuation in polycrystalline materials is modeled. The constitutive behavior of an initially stressed solid is coupled into Weaver's scattering-based attenuation model [J. Mech. Phys. Solids 38, 55-86 (1990)]. As a result, the pressure-dependent longitudinal and shear wave attenuation coefficients are unveiled. As the traditional stress-free attenuation coefficients depend on the degree of single-crystal elastic anisotropy, it is shown that the pressure influence on attenuation depends on the anisotropy of the single-crystal's third-order or nonlinear elastic constants. Analysis of the model indicates linkages between pressure derivatives of velocity and attenuation to the material's linear and nonlinear elastic anisotropy, crystal structure, and type of atomic bonding.