English

Supershear Rayleigh waves at a soft interface

Fluid Dynamics 2015-06-12 v2

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of waves at a liquid foam surface propagating faster than the bulk shear waves. The existence of such waves has long been debated, but the recent observation of supershear events in a geophysical context has inspired us to search for their existence in a model viscoelastic system. An optimized fast profilometry technique allowed us to observe on a liquid foam surface the waves triggered by the impact of a projectile. At high impact velocity, we show that the expected subshear Rayleigh waves are accompanied by faster surface waves that can be identified as supershear Rayleigh waves.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1301.1024,
  title  = {Supershear Rayleigh waves at a soft interface},
  author = {Anne Le Goff and Pablo Cobelli and Guillaume Lagubeau},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1301.1024},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures, 2 supplementary videos

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:04:37.387Z