ANDERSON LOCALIZATION OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL WAVE-PROPAGATION ON A FLUID-LOADED PLATE

The propagation of flexural waves along a fluid-loaded plate with an irregular array of line attachments is examined. The system is shown to be equivalent to a one-dimensional chain with a nearest neighbor coupling arising from the fluid-loaded wave, and a long-range coupling due to bulk waves in the fluid. The magnitude of the long-range coupling is shown to be small compared to the nearest neighbor coupling for many applications. The irregularity will thus produce Anderson localization, at least for moderate distances. The equations of motion are numerically solved for two cases: (1) a sparse array for which the long-range coupling is expected to be negligible, and (2) a dense array for which the long-range coupling is fairly small, but not negligible. Unambiguous Anderson localization effects were observed in both cases.