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Unlike P waves, S waves cannot travel through the molten outer core of the Earth, and this causes a shadow zone for S waves opposite to their origin. They can still propagate through the solid inner core: when a P wave strikes the boundary of molten and solid cores at an oblique angle, S waves will form and propagate in the solid medium. When ...
Body waves travel through the interior of the Earth. Surface waves travel across the surface. Surface waves decay more slowly with distance than body waves which travel in three dimensions. Particle motion of surface waves is larger than that of body waves, so surface waves tend to cause more damage.
P waves travel through the fluid layers of the Earth's interior, and yet they are refracted slightly when they pass through the transition between the semisolid mantle and the liquid outer core. As a result, there is a P wave " shadow zone " between 103° and 142° [ 5 ] from the earthquake's focus, where the initial P waves are not registered ...
Surface waves span a wide frequency range, and the period of waves that are most damaging is usually 10 seconds or longer. Surface waves can travel around the globe many times from the largest earthquakes. Surface waves are caused when P waves and S waves come to the surface. Examples are the waves at the surface of water and air (ocean surface ...
Seismic waves would travel in straight lines if Earth was of uniform composition, but structural, chemical, and thermal variations affect the properties of seismic waves, most importantly their velocity, leading to the reflection and refraction of these waves. The location and magnitude of variations in the subsurface can be calculated by the ...
S-wave refraction evaluates the shear wave generated by the seismic source located at a known distance from the array. The wave is generated by horizontally striking an object on the ground surface to induce the shear wave. Since the shear wave is the second fastest wave, it is sometimes referred to as the secondary wave. When compared to the ...
Surface-wave inversion is the method by which elastic properties, density, and thickness of layers in the subsurface are obtained through analysis of surface-wave dispersion. [2] The entire inversion process requires the gathering of seismic data, the creation of dispersion curves, and finally the inference of subsurface properties.
The propagation velocity of the seismic waves depends on density and elasticity of the earth materials. In other words, the speeds of the seismic waves vary as they travel through different materials in the Earth. The two main components of a seismic event are body waves and surface waves. Both of these have different modes of wave propagation. [7]