Abstract
The propagation of magneto-thermoelastic disturbances produced by a thermal shock in a finitely conducting elastic half-space in contact with vacuum is investigated. The boundary of the half-space is subjected to a normal load. Lord-Shulman theory of thermoelasticity [1] is used to account for the interaction between the elastic and thermal fields. Laplace transform on time is used to obtain the short-time approximations of the solutions because of the short duration of 'second sound' effects. It is found that in the half-space the displacement is continuous at the modified dilational and thermal wavefronts, whereas the perturbed magnetic field, stress and the temperature suffer discontinuities at these locations. The perturbed magnetic field, is, however, discontinuous at the Alf'ven-acoustic wavefront in vacuum.