Numerical simulation of fundamental elastic wave modes coupling in composite plates

In the case of the piezoelectric actuators of the cube-shaped installed symmetrically and perfectly bonded on both external surfaces of the plate-like structures, the symmetric and shear horizontal elastic wave modes are excited at the same time. The current work concerns the numerical simulation of the coupling of the above-mentioned elastic wave modes in a composite plate of angle ply configuration. In the first step, the dispersion curves for all studied composite configurations are estimated. Next, for the arbitrary chosen fixed frequency of the excitation, finite element simulations are performed. As a result of these simulations, the group velocities of the observed elastic modes are estimated. Next, the appropriate wave modes are identified by the comparison of the group velocities obtained from the analysis of the dispersion curves and from the simulations. In the cases for which the identification is possible, a good agreement between analytical and simulation results is observed.