Propagation of Lamb waves in an immersed periodically grooved plate: Experimental detection of the scattered converted backward waves

In this paper is studied the propagation of Lamb waves in an aluminum plate with a periodic grooved surface on only one side and immersed in water. The interaction between an incident Lamb wave and the grating gives rise to retro-converted waves. Preliminary numerical simulation by the finite element method is performed in order to obtain key parameters for the experiments. It is shown that retro-converted waves radiating into the water are detectable although their amplitudes are small. The phonon relation is verified for the leaky Lamb modes. The damping coefficients of the leaky Lamb modes in the grooved immersed plate are evaluated.