THE WEIGHTED RESIDUAL METHOD FOR WAVE PROPAGATION IN A ONE-DIMENSIONAL INHOMOGENEOUS MEDIUM

Abstract

In this article the propagation of plane-waves in a one-dimensional inhomogeneous medium with arbitrarily varying material constant is examined by the weighted residual method. After formulating the boundary value problem the weighted residual method is applied and the resulting equation is solved numerically using the finite element method. At the end of the article a practical example, namely the reflectivity of an inhomogeneous wave absorber, is worked out and its results are presented in forms of graphs.