Direct and Inverse Scattering Problems in Elastic Waves: Analysis and Computation

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Scattering problems are concerned with the effect that an inhomogeneous medium has on an incident field. Driven by significant applications in diverse scientific areas such as radar and sonar, geophysical exploration, nondestructive testing, medical imaging, near-field optical microscopy, and nano-optics,the scattering problems have been extensively studied by many researchers, especially for acoustic and electromagnetic waves. However, many theoretical analysis and numerical computation are left undone for elastic waves due to the complexity of the underlying model equations. The research is multidisciplinary by nature and lies at the interface of mathematics, physics, engineering, and materials sciences. It will contribute towards better understandings of the complex physical and mathematical problems in scattering theory of elasticity. It has significant potential for advancing the frontiers of applied and computational mathematics, and for evolving new mathematics and science. The results of the proposed research activities will be disseminated through publications, seminars, minisymposia, conferences, and workshops. The PI will introduce an advanced graduate course and a graduate seminar series. These will aid in the recruitment and retention of talented students with diverse backgrounds throughout the academic pipeline. The software codes and new course materials developed in the project will be disseminated on a public website and will be available for download by the scientific community. The research and educational components will be integrated together to help to train a new generation of researchers and foster greater awareness and interests in applied and computational mathematics with particular applications to scattering theory among graduate students and postdocs. This project outlines a three-year research plan for developing effective mathematical models, examining fundamental mathematical issues, and designing efficient computational methods for new and important classes of direct and inverse scattering problems in elastic waves. The proposed research builds on the PI?s prior research accomplishments in the area of scattering theory for acoustic and electromagnetic waves. It concerns the following three topics: (1) time-domain obstacle scattering problem; (2) time-harmonic medium scattering problem; (3) inverse random source scattering problem. The mathematical modeling and analysis techniques and computational methods developed in this project will address several key scientific challenges and open problems in direct and inverse scattering theory for elastic waves, which include modeling and computation of the elastic wave propagation in an inhomogeneous medium, numerical solution of the elastic wave equations and well-posedness of the associated model, uniqueness and stability of stochastic inverse source scattering problem. The proposed computational models and tools are highly promising for quantitative study of the complex physical and mathematical problems in elasticity. They have great potentials to provide inexpensive and easily controllable virtual prototypes of the structures in the design and fabrication of novel elastic devices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.