Investigation of wave reflection at the joint with different wave impedances on two sides.

When the stress wave propagates through rock mass with different wave impedances on two sides. It shows different reflection tendencies compared with the traditional study of wave propagation. A characteristic line method combined with the displacement discontinuity model was proposed to study the wave reflection through such rock mass. The effects of incident frequency, joint stiffness and wave impedance ratio on the reflection coefficient were discussed. The results show that the reflection coefficient increases as the wave impedance ratio increases. The traditional study of wave reflection can be regarded as a special case of the present study when the wave impedance ratio equals 1.0. Moreover, the difference of reflection coefficients decreases as the incident frequency increases, while increases as the joint stiffness and wave impedance ratio increase when the wave impedance ratio is larger than 1.0. When the wave impedance ratio is smaller than 1.0, the difference of reflection coefficients increases firstly and then decreases with the increase of incident frequency and joint stiffness, while decreases as the wave impedance ratio increases. For the cases of large incident frequency or small joint stiffness, the effects of wave impedance ratio can be neglected for the approximated prediction of wave reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]