Numerical Solution of a Wave Propagation Problem Along Plate Structures Based on the Isogeometric Approach

Ultrasonic guided waves propagating along large structures have great potential as a nondestructive evaluation method. In this context, it is very important to obtain the dispersion curves, which depend on the cross-section of the structure. In this paper, we compute dispersion curves along infinite isotropic plate-like structures using the semi-analytical method (SAFEM) with an isogeometric approach based on B-spline functions. The SAFEM method leads to a family of generalized eigenvalue problems depending on the wave number. For a prescribed wave number, the solution of this problem consists of the nodal displacement vector and the frequency of the guided wave. In this work, the results obtained with B-splines shape functions are compared to the numerical SAFEM solution with quadratic Lagrange shape functions. Advantages of the isogeometric approach are highlighted and include the smoothness of the displacement field components and the computational cost of solving the corresponding generalized eigenvalue problems. Finally, we investigate the convergence of Lagrange and B-spline approaches when the number of degrees of freedom grows. The study shows that cubic B-spline functions provide the best solution with the smallest relative errors for a given number of degrees of freedom.