Three‐dimensional time‐harmonic fundamental solutions for a fluid‐saturated poroelastic half‐space with partially permeable free surface

By virtue of a pair of scalar potentials for the displacement of the solid skeleton and the pore fluid pressure field of a saturated poroelastic medium, an alternative solution method to the Helmholtz decomposition is developed for the wave propagation problems in the framework of Biot's theory. As an application, a comprehensive solution for three‐dimensional response of an isotropic poroelastic half‐space with a partially permeable hydraulic free surface under an arbitrarily distributed time‐harmonic internal force field and fluid sources is developed. The Green's functions for the poroelastic fields, corresponding to point, ring, and disk loads, are reduced to semi‐infinite complex‐valued integrals that can be evaluated numerically by an appropriate quadrature scheme. Analytical and numerical comparisons are made with existing elastic and poroelastic solutions to illustrate the quality and features of the solution. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.