Influence of local cubic anisotropy on the transition towards an equipartition regime in a 3D texture-less random elastic medium

At long lapse times in randomly fluctuating media with macroscopic isotropy (texture-less media), the energy of elastic waves is equipartitioned between compressional (P) and shear (S) waves. This property is independent of the local isotropy or anisotropy of the heterogeneous constitutive tensor and of the type of source. However the local symmetry of the constitutive tensor does influence the rate of convergence to equipartition and this paper discusses the precise influence of local anisotropy on the time required to reach equipartition. More particularly, a randomly-fluctuating medium is considered, whose behavior is statistically isotropic, and locally cubic. After calculating all the differential and total scattering cross-sections in that case, an analytical formula is derived for the rate of convergence to the equipartition regime, function of the second-order statistics of the mechanical parameter fields (bulk and shear moduli and anisotropy parameter). The local anisotropy is shown to influence strongly that transition rate, with a faster transition when the fluctuations of the anisotropy parameter are positively correlated to those of the shear modulus. A numerical model is constructed to illustrate numerically these results. Since the asymptotic regime of equipartition cannot be simulated directly because it would require too large a computational domain, boundaries are introduced and mechanical properties are chosen so as to minimize their influence on equipartition. •A stochastic model is introduced with isotropic background and anisotropic foreground.•Scattering operators are derived and compared to the classical isotropic formulas.•Equipartition time is calculated and plotted for different correlation functions.•Equipartition times for anisotropic and isotropic media are compared.