MAGNETO-THERMO-ELASTIC DISTURBANCES WITH THERMAL RELAXATION IN A SOLID DUE TO HEAT SOURCES.

A study is made of the propagation of magneto-thermo-elastic disturbances with thermal relaxation in a perfectly conducting unbounded solid, due to heat sources distributed over a plane parallel to the applied magnetic field. The governing partial differential equations are solved in the Laplace transform domain by the state space approach. The small-time solutions with physical significance are obtained. The solutions are found to consist of a thermal wave and an acoustic wave. The speeds of these waves are increased due to the presence of the external magnetic field. The displacement field, the thermal field and the magnetic field experience discontinuities at each of the wave fronts. The effect of the magnetic field is to shift the position of discontinuities and to reduce their decay with distance from the source. The significant effect of the thermal relaxation is to exhibit the occurrence of some new discontinuties not encountered in the conventional theory.