The paper discusses the properties of the acoustic waves guided by an interface inside piezoelectric media. The interfaces of two types have been considered: (i) an infinitesimally thin metallic layer inserted into homogeneous piezoelectric crystal of arbitrary symmetry; (ii) rigidly bonded crystals whose piezoelectric coefficients differ by sign while the other material constants are identical. Several general theorems have been proved regarding the existence of interface acoustic waves (IAWs) propagating more slowly than bulk waves. In particular, a sufficient condition for the existence of such ‘slow’ IAWs has been derived. The propagation of leaky IAWs has been studied. Special attention has been paid to the analysis of the situation when the imaginary component of the leaky IAW velocity vanishes, resulting in the appearance of non-attenuating IAWs travelling faster than the slow transverse bulk wave. The computations performed for LiNbO
3
and LiTaO
3
illustrate general conclusions.
DISPERSION ANALYSIS OF BULK ACOUSTIC WAVES IN PIEZOELECTRIC MEDIA DISCRETIZED BY ENERGY-ORTHOGONAL FINITE ELEMENTS
