Time-Dependent Wave-Structure Interaction Revisited: Thermo-piezoelectric Scatterers

The problem of describing the way in which an incoming acoustic wave is scattered by an elastic body immersed in a fluid is one of central importance in detecting and identifying submerged objects. The problem is generally referred to as a fluid-structure interaction problem or a wave-structure interaction problem and is mathematically formulated as a transmission problem. In this paper, we are concerned with a time-dependent transmission problem for a thermo-piezoelectric elastic body immersed in a compressible fluid. It is shown that the problem can be treated by the boundary-field equation method, provided an appropriate scaling factor is employed. As usual, based on estimates for solutions in the Laplace-transformed domain, we may obtain properties of corresponding solutions in the time-domain without having to perform the inversion of the Laplace-domain solutions.