SUMMARYThe paper complements and extends the previous works on partitioned explicit wave propagation analysis methods, which were presented for discontinuous wave propagation problems in solids. An efficient implementation of the partitioned explicit wave propagation analysis methods is introduced. The present implementation achieves about 25% overall computational effort compared with the previous implementation with the same accuracy. The present algorithm tracks, with different integration time step sizes in accordance with their different wave speeds, the propagation fronts of longitudinal and shear waves. This is accomplished by integrating separately the element-by-element partitioned longitud inal and shear equations of motion. The state vectors (displacements, velocity and accelerations) of the longitudinal and shear components are reconciled at the end of each time step. The reconciliation procedure does not require any system parameters such as material properties, density, unlike conventional artificial viscosity methods. Numerical examples are presented as applied to linear and non-linear wave propagation problems, which demonstrate high-fidelity wavefront tracking ability of the present method, and compared with existing conventional wave propagation analysis methods.