Acoustic Radiation by Point- or Line-Excited Laminated Plates

Abstract

This paper presents an elasticity theory solution for computation of acoustic radiation by a point- or line-excited fluid-loaded laminated plate, which may consist of a stack of an arbitrary number of different isotropic material layers. A one-side water-loaded three-layer sandwich plate, which consists of a hard rubber core sandwiched between two steel plates of equal thickness, was used as an example of the laminated plates. The approximated equivalent sandwich plate solutions were compared with the elasticity theory solutions. These results show that the approximated solutions are, as expected, valid only at frequencies much lower than the coincidence frequency. The numerical result also shows that, even at about one-tenth of the coincidence frequency, the approximated solutions suffer substantial error. The differences between the dry-side- and the wet-side-excited radiated fields of a single-layer uniform plate and a sandwich plate were investigated and compared, and found to be significantly different at frequencies above the coincidence frequency. [S0739-3717(00)01803-1]