Circumferential waves in pre-stressed functionally graded cylindrical curved plates

Abstract

Abstract Initial stress (pre-stress) in functionally graded material (FGM) structures is often inevitable because of the limitation of available manufacturing technology. On the basis of the “mechanics of incremental deformations”, the circumferential wave characteristics in FGM cylindrical curved plates under uniform initial stresses in the radial and axial directions are investigated. The Legendre polynomial series method is used to solve the coupled wave equations with variable coefficients. Through numerical examples, the convergence of the polynomial method is discussed. The influences of the initial stresses on the circumferential Lamb-like and the circumferential SH waves are investigated, respectively. Numerical results show that they are quite distinct. Moreover, the influences of the initial stress in the axial direction are very different from those in the radial direction, both on the dispersion curves and on the displacement and stress distributions.