Confirmation of Biot’s theory

Plona’s recent measurements of elastic-wave speeds in a water-saturated porous structure of sintered glass beads are compared quantitatively to the predictions of Biot’s theory. The theoretical predictions lie within the bounds of experimental error (3%) for the fast compressional wave and for the shear wave in all cases. For the slow compressional wave, the theoretically predicted speeds lie within about 10% of the experimental values and increase with increase in porosity as observed. Our model achieves this agreement with no significant free parameters. The frame moduli are estimated using a recently developed self-consistent theory of composite materials. The induced mass of the frame in a water environment is also estimated theoretically.