Numerical Analysis of Vibration Attenuation and Bandgaps in Radially Periodic Plates

Objective: Periodic configuration of mechanical and civil structures has shown great potential for noise and vibration reduction. However, the use of Cartesian coordinates in studying periodicity effects in elastic structures overlooks the benefits of radially periodic configurations when dealing with wave propagation in large flexible plates disturbed by a small source area. This paper presents an easy-to-use numerical approach to predicting bandgap characteristics in polar coordinates. Methodology: To demonstrate the vibration-attenuation effect, we consider a circular radially periodic plate model. We use an adapted Wave Finite-Element method in numerical experiments to demonstrate the existence of the attenuation effect. To verify the numerical results, we apply an adapted Floquet theory to polar coordinates. Results and Conclusions: Our findings indicate that theoretical and numerical results are in excellent agreement considering a new parameter that introduces the distance from the origin. The adapted Wave Finite-Element approach and Floquet theory presented here demonstrate their potential to model more complex structures in polar coordinates.