Measurement and Analysis of a Circular Wedge Acoustic Waveguide

This study investigated the propagation of flexural waves along the outer edge of a circular cylindrical wedge, as well as phase velocities and the corresponding mode displacement. Thus far, only approximate solutions to these problems have been derived because of the complexity of boundary-value problems. In this study, the dispersion curves were determined using the bi-dimensional finite element method (bi-d FEM), as derived through the separation of variables and the Hamilton principle. According to a calculation of modal displacement, the maximum deformations appeared at the outer edge of the wedge tip. Additionally, the dispersion curves were measured using a laser-induced guided wave experiment, in which a knife-edge measurement scheme and a two-dimensional fast Fourier transform (2D-FFT) method were used. Both numerical and experimental results correlated closely with each other, validating the numerical solution.