Surface Acoustic Waves (SAWs) have applications in a wide range of technologies. SAWs are used can be used to detect flaws, faults and breaks surfaces of different materials. This can be useful detecting faults in materials before more serious faults occur. SAWs are also applied in televisions. SAWs are used as a signal filter (in the form of a quartz crystal) in the intermediate frequency amplifier, which prepares the RF signal for demodulation into baseband video and audio.

When an oscillatory force is applied to the surface of a solid, mechanical waves arise. These are known as acoustic waves. Such bulk waves occur in two modes,l ongi t udi nal andshear waves. Longitudinal waves are where the axis of vibration of the particles is parallel to the direction of propagation of the wave front. This causes alternating compressions within the solid. In shear waves, the axis of vibration is perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the wave. With this, the bonding between the particles within the solid experiences shearing forces.

Acoustic waves extend to the surface of the solid as well as throughout the bulk. Both modes of oscillation can occur in the surface of the solid. Of course, surface shear waves are polarised in the plane of the surface because that is the only axis of vibration available (at surface depth). Another surface wave which can exist is called the Rayleigh wave. This wave takes the form of an elliptical wave. The Rayleigh wave is a mixture of shear and longitudinal waves. It is sustained from reflections of acoustic waves on and beneath the surface. This system is analogous to fibre optics, where light is guided along a glass fibre by reflections with an angle less than the critical angle of the material. In general the system which arises when an acoustic wave enters a solid is shown in figure 1.

In figure 1 the incident wave is longitudinal (as in the ensuing experiment). As would be expected, there is a reflected and refracted (transmitted) longitudinal wave. Also, through some mode conversion process, reflected and refracted shear waves exist too. It is the refracted shear and longitudinal waves that generate the Rayleigh wave at the surface. The velocity of the Rayleigh wave can be represented by the theoretical expression,

Usually, depending on the type of material, shear waves or longitudinal waves are favoured at the surface. It can be determined which wave mode, is the major constituent of the Rayleigh wave using Snell's law. If the angle of incidence and the speed in both materials are known, then the angle of refraction can be calculated. Since the Rayleigh wave is a surface phenomena and does not penetrate far into the material, it can be assumed that the wave mode with the greatest refraction angle (i.e. the wave closest to the surface) is the mode that gives rise to the Rayleigh wave. Hence, the refraction angle can be calculated thus,

The Rayleigh wave does not penetrate far into the material (because of it's very nature). The energy of the Rayleigh wave falls exponentially along the depth of the material. It is assumed for a SAW that the wave energy drops to 1/e of the surface value at a depth of one wavelength.

If we then divide throughout byE02 , this givesnormal i sed values for the amplitude. This is useful when the amplitude of the wave is measured in the form of a voltage from a Cathode Ray Oscilloscope (CRO). Equation 4 can be linearised by taking logarithms of both sides, so that statistical (least square fit, (LSF)) methods can be applied.