Wave splitting of the Timoshenko beam equation in the time domain

In English In recent years, wave splitting in conjunction with invariant imbedding and Green's function techniques has been applied with great success to a number of interesting inverse and direct scattering problems. The aim of the present paper is to derive a wave splitting for the Timoshenko equation, a fourth order PDE of importance in beam theory. An analysis of the hyperbolicity of the Timoshenko equation and its, in a sense, less physical relatives - the Euler-Bernoulli and the Rayleigh equations - is also provided.