Take shear-horizontal waves with displacement . This is divergence-free, so the elastic equation reduces to . Rigid boundaries require at , giving modes , . With shear speed , the dispersion relation is
For , the phase velocity is and the group velocity is , with .
The kinetic energy density is . The only strains are and , together with their symmetric counterparts; thus the isotropic linear-elastic energy density is . Average over one temporal period and integrate across the layer. The sine- and cosine-squared transverse integrals are both , giving
The guided shear-horizontal mode has average equipartition after both operations; a time average at a fixed transverse point alone need not give equality.
Take a shear-horizontal wave polarized in the direction,
Then , and the elastic-wave equation reduces to
For , the rigid boundary gives , while vanishing shear traction at the free surface gives . Thus
The dispersion relation of each guided shear-horizontal mode is