This work is dedicated to the modelling of elastodynamic waves in two particular situations for which standard numerical methods experience difficulties. In the first part, the case where the velocity of the pressure waves (P waves) is much greater than the velocity of the shear waves (S waves) is studied. When applied to this situation, standard explicit time-stepping methods are hampered by the fact that the mesh size is dictated by the smallest velocity. We develop a numerical scheme that uncouples the body S-waves and P-waves by exploiting the well-known representation of elastodynamic states in terms of Lamé potentials. Formulations are derived and analysed for the 2-D case, where both potentials are scalar functions. Homogeneous essential Dirichlet boundary conditions lead to non-standard natural conditions for our potential-based formulation. A system of two wave equations, coupled by two boundary conditions, is obtained. This formulation is energy-preserving. A discretization approach involving finite elements in space and a theta-scheme in time applied to the boundary unknowns inside the domain is proposed, so that the « natural » time step for each wave speed can be used. This scheme is shown to be also energy-preserving. The case of Neumann boundary conditions is also addressed. These conditions are treated as perturbations of the Dirichlet case, an approach which yields good results in the time-harmonic case while giving rise to severe instabilities in the time-discrete transient case. The second part of this thesis is concerned with the design, analysis, numerical approximation and implementation of effective transmission conditions (ETCs) for the propagation of elastic waves through a thin elastic layer with small uniform thickness h which is embedded in a reference elastic medium, under transient conditions, with both materials assumed to have isotropic properties. Here, the thinness of the layer has an adverse effect on usual explicit schemes, since meshing the layer with small elements will induce a corresponding reduction of the critical time step through a CFL condition, whereas it is expected that the layer-less CFL condition will remain valid if the layer is modelled using ETCs. First, a complete analysis is given in the case of a planar elastic layer, applicable to two- and three-dimensional situations. The stability of the proposed second-order ETC is established as the result of energy preservation, while the approximation error on the transmission solution is shown to be of order O(h^3) in energy norm. Numerical experiments, performed for two- and three-dimensional configurations, validate the theoretical findings on stability, approximation error and stability conditions of time-stepping schemes that are natural modifications of the explicit scheme used in the absence of a thin layer. Then, ETCs are also derived for the case of a curvilinear layer embedded in a two-dimensional elastic medium. Their stability is again proven as resulting from energy preservation and the theoretical results are illustrated with numerical experiments.