Generalized thermoelastic plane harmonic waves in materials with voids

The aim of the present paper is to give a detailed account of the plane harmonic generalized thermoelastic waves in solids containing vacuous voids based on the modified fourier law of heat conduction. The general characteristic equation being quartic suggests that there are four longitudinal waves, namely: quasi-elastic [...], quasi-thermal [...], volume fraction [...] and micro-thermal [...], in addition to transverse waves, which can propagate in such solids. The transverse waves get decoupled from the rest of the field quantities and hence remain unaffected due to temperature variation and porosity effects. These waves travel without attenuation and dispersion. The other generalized thermoelastic waves are significantly influenced by the interacting fields and hence suffer both attenuation and dispersion. The general complex characteristic equation has been solved by using descartes algorithm along with irreducible case of cardano's method with the help of demoivre's theorem in order to obtain phase speeds, attenuation coefficients and specific loss factor of energy dissipation. The propagation of waves in non-heat conducting solids has also been discussed. Finally, the numerical solution of the secular equation is carried out to compute phase velocities, attenuation coefficients and specific loss factors of thermoelastic waves which are presented graphically.