Abstract
An attempt has been made here to study the propagation of shear waves in an elastic medium under effect of initial stress, gravity field, inhomogeneous and dry sand. The shear wave velocity has been investigated for several particular situations. It has been shown that the results of the study agree with those the case of shear wave propagation in a homogeneous medium in the absence of the sand, when the initial stress and gravity field are absent. In order to illustrate the validity of the analysis presented here, the derived analytical expression has been computed numerically, by considering an illustrative example and the variances of the concerned physical variables have been presented graphically. The results indicate that the effect of initial stress, gravity field, inhomogeneous and sand are very pronounced. It is observed that the velocity of shear wave is amply influenced by the initial stress, gravity field and heterogeneity parameters and the presence of the sand. The study has an important bearing on investigations of different problems in the earth's interior and also in seismological studies.