Wave propagation in anisotropic media with non-local elasticity

In an effort to understand and quantify the effect of non-local elasticity on the wave propagation response of laminated composite layered media, a frequency-wavenumber domain based finite element method is employed. The developed elements are based on the exact solution in the transformed domain and thus exactly represent the dynamics of a layer. This feature enables to model a layer of any thickness by a single element and drastically reduces the cost of computation. The effect of non-locality on the dispersion relation and in turn on the wave response is compared with local (classical) elasticity solutions. A procedure and sample example is outlined to estimate the magnitude of the non-locality parameter by comparing the dispersion relation with lattice dynamics. The effect of non-locality, in terms of the mode-shift and appearance of dispersion on the modes of Lamb waves is further demonstrated. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.