Solvability results for the transient acoustic scattering by an elastic obstacle

The well-posedness of the linear evolution problem governing the transient scattering of acoustic waves by an elastic obstacle is investigated. After using linear superposition in the acoustic domain, the analysis focuses on an equivalent causal transmission problem. The proposed analysis provides existence and uniqueness results, as well as continuous data-to-solution maps. Solvability results are established for three cases, which differ by the assumed regularity in space on the transmission data on the acoustic-elastic interface Γ. The first two results consider data with “standard” H^−1/2(Γ) and improved H^1/2(Γ) regularity in space, respectively, and are established using the Hille-Yosida theorem and energy identities. The third result assumes data with L²(Γ) regularity in space and follows by Sobolev interpolation. Obtaining the latter result was motivated by the key role it plays (in a separate study) in the justification of an iterative numerical solution method based on domain decomposition. A numerical example is presented to emphasize the latter point.