LINEAR WAVES AT THE FREE-SURFACE OF A SATURATED POROUS-MEDIA

The principal aim of this paper is to study the propagation of linear waves at the free surface of a saturated porous media. This problem is formulated as an eigenvalue problem with complex eigenvalues, and the solution is given in term of an orthogonal eigenfunction expansion, whose completeness has been taken for granted in the literature regarding the problem as a classical Sturm-Liouville problem, which is not the case due to the complex nature of the eigenvalues. The main purpose of the present work is to prove the completeness of the eigenfunctions for all possible physical values of the parameters involved, even for some values of the parameters, where previous numerical works have found abnormal behavior of the eigenvalues. In those cases if we mistakenly consider the problem as a Sturm-Liouville one, as has been done before, the eigenfunction expansion will not hold, but indeed we will prove that it does.