Longitudinal and shear wave diffraction at the junction of two fluid loaded, doubly curved shells

Abstract

A perturbation solution is developed to study diffracted membrane waves, both longitudinal and shear, originating from the junction of two doubly curved shells which are joined so that their tangent is continuous. The excitation is an acoustic wave incident obliquely to the tangent line of the junction. The diffracted membrane wavefield is dependent upon or forced by an outer solution which characterizes the acoustic interaction between two joined, flat plates and the surrounding fluid. To illustrate the simplicity of the approach, the outer solution is approximated by the acoustic diffraction from two massive plates. Explicit expressions are derived for the membrane wave diffraction coefficients which are related, by reciprocity, to the analogous membrane-to-acoustic diffraction coefficients.