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The dispersive behaviour of time-harmonic waves propagating along a principal direction in a perfectly bonded pre-stressed compressible elastic bi-material laminate is considered. The dispersion relation which relates wave speed and wavenumber is obtained by formulating the incremental boundary value problem and the use of the propagator matrix technique. At the low wavenumber limit, depending on the pre-stress, both the fundamental mode and the next lowest mode may have finite phase speeds. For the higher modes which have infinite phase speeds in the low wavenumber region, an expression to determine the cut-off frequencies is obtained. At the high wavenumber limit, the phase speeds of the fundamental mode and higher modes tend to phase speeds of the surface wave, the interfacial wave or the limiting phase speed of the composite. For numerical examples, either a two-parameter compressible neo-Hookean material or a two-parameter compressible Varga material is assumed.

The dispersive behavior of small amplitude waves propagating along a non-principal direction in a pre-stressed, compressible elastic layer is considered. One of the principal axes of stretch is normal to the elastic layer and the direction of propagation makes an angle θ with one of the in-plane principal axes. The dispersion relations which relate wave speed and wavenumber are obtained for both symmetric and anti-symmetric motions by formulating the incremental boundary value problem for a general strain energy function. The behavior of the dispersion curves for symmetric waves is for the most part similar to that of the anti-symmetric waves at the low and high wavenumber limits. At the low wavenumber limit, depending on the pre-stress and propagation angle, it may be possible for both the fundamental mode and the next lowest mode to have finite phase speeds, while other higher modes have an infinite phase speed. At the high wavenumber limit, the phase speeds of the fundamental mode and the higher modes tend to the Rayleigh surface wave speed and the limiting wave speeds of the layer, respectively. Numerical results are presented for a Blatz–Ko material and the effect of the propagation angle is clearly illustrated.