A rheological model for immersed corrugated elastic plates

The influence of surface imperfections on the propagation of guided waves in an immersed elastic plate can be interpreted by means of a rheological model. The corrugated surface is modeled by a very thin interface, similar to a Jones spring model, which replaces the continuity boundary conditions at the liquid - corrugated solid-plate interface. As the surrounding liquid is considered to be perfect, only one complex stiffness is used for the model of Jones. The selection of the plate guided mode and the test frequency are motivated by the detectability and non-interference with other modes. The spring stiffness is obtained by a best fit procedure, between the analytical solution and the results obtained by the finite elements method (FEM). One way ensuring the agreement of the two approaches, rheological and FEM, is to consider angular resonances provided by the transmission coefficients. Small changes in the parameters of the roughness keep the positions of the angular resonances of the plate practically unchanged, while at the same time large variations of the half width of the transmission coefficient curve is observed. The effect of corrugation parameters on the guided modes in the plate can be predicted by using the rheological model with the deduced spring complex stiffness. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.