Scattering of Compression Waves by Spherical Obstacles

The scattering of plane P waves by a spherical obstacle is formulated. A calculation is given for the special case of scattering by a perfectly rigid sphere in which the medium outside has a Poisson's ratio of ¼. The range of sizes of obstacles used in the calculation includes radii very small compared with wave length and radii comparable to the wave length. For incident P waves, scattered P and S are computed with shifts in time phase occurring in both with respect to the incident beam. For small obstacles, the scattered S wave is generally broadside to the scattered P-wave beam.