A Conservation law for a sedimentary basin submitted to a seismic wave

Abstract

We establish the abstract and semi-abstract equations that translate the conservation law for a totally-filled, or totally-empty basin of arbitrary shape submitted to a SH plane seismic body wave. This law states that the input flux is equal to the sum of the scattered and absorbed fluxes, the latter being equal to zero when the filler medium is non-lossy. We show that the well-known, exact, solutions for the case of a semi-circular basin indeed satisfy this law. The latter can, and should, be employed to test the validity of any theoretical or numerical solution one might propose for a basin of arbitrary shape.