On wave propagation in anisotropic elastic cylinders at nanoscale: surface elasticity and its effect

Material heterogeneity induced by a surface or interface may be neglected at macroscale since the surface-to-volume ratio is usually small. However, its effect can become significant for structures at nanoscale with a large surface-to-volume ratio. In this paper, we incorporate such surface material heterogeneity into wave propagation analysis of a nanosized transversely isotropic cylinder. This is achieved by using the concept of surface elasticity. Instead of directly using the well-known Gurtin–Murdoch (GM) surface elasticity, we develop here another general framework based on a thin layer model. A novel approach based on state-space formalism is used to derive the approximate governing equations. Three different sources of surface effect can be identified in the first-order surface elasticity, i.e., the elasticity effect, the inertia effect and the thickness effect. It is found that the derived theory becomes identical to the GM surface elasticity if the thickness effect is dropped and when the material is isotropic. The axisymmetric wave propagation in a transversely isotropic cylinder with surface effect is then studied, and an exact solution is presented. Numerical results are finally given to show that the surface effect will play a very pronounced role in wave propagation in cylinders at nanoscale.