Elastic weak turbulence: From the vibrating plate to the drum.

Abstract

Weak wave turbulence has been observed on a thin elastic plates since the work by Düring etal. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 025503 (2006)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.97.025503]. Here we report theoretical, experimental, and numerical studies of wave turbulence in a forced thin elastic plate submitted to increasing tension. When increasing the tension (or decreasing the bending stiffness of the plate) the plate evolves progressively from a plate into an elastic membrane as in drums. We first consider a thin plate and increase the tension in experiments and numerical simulations. We observe that the system remains in a state of weak turbulence of weakly dispersive waves. This observation is in contrast with what has been observed in water waves when decreasing the water depth, which also changes the waves from dispersive to weakly dispersive. The weak turbulence observed in the deep water case evolves into a solitonic regime. Here no such transition is observed for the stretched plate. We then apply the weak turbulence theory to the membrane case and show with numerical simulations that indeed the weak turbulence framework remains valid for the membrane and no formation of singular structures (shocks) should be expected in contrast with acoustic wave turbulence.