Thermoviscoelastic waves due to time harmonic loads acting on the boundary of a solid halfspace

This paper studies the disturbance due to time harmonic normal and thermal point loads acting on the boundary of a homogeneous isotropic thermoviscoelastic solid halfspace. The Kelvin-Voigt model is used to investigate the instant problem in the context of generalized theories of thermoelasticity. The Hankel transform technique has been employed to solve the boundary value problem in the transformed domain. The inverse transform integrals are evaluated by using Romberg integration with adaptive step-size after using the results from successive refinements of recurresive trapezoidal rule and extrapolation of the results to the limit when the step size tends to zero. The temperature and stresses so obtained in the physical domain are computed numerically and presented graphically in different situations for the polymethyl methacrylate material which has wide applications in industry and medicine. A complete and comprehensive analysis and comparison of the results in various theories of generalized thermoviscoelasticity are also presented.