Modeling of guided circumferential SH and Lamb-type waves in open waveguides with semi-analytical finite element and Perfectly Matched Layer method

The circumferential guided waves (CGW) are of increasing interest for non-destructive inspecting pipes or other cylindrical structures. If such structures are buried underground, these modes can also deliver some valuable information about the surrounding medium or the quality of the contact between the pipe and the embedding medium. Toward this goal, the detailed knowledge of the dispersive characteristics of CGW is required; henceforth, the robust numerical method has to be established, which allows for the extensive study of the propagation of these modes under different loading conditions. Mathematically, this is the problem of the propagation of guided waves in an open waveguide. This problem differs significantly from the corresponding problem of a closed waveguide both in physical and numerical aspect. The paper presents a combination of semi-analytical finite element method with Perfectly Matched Layer technique for a class of coupled acoustics/elasticity problems with application to modeling of CGW. We discuss different aspects of our algorithm and validate the proposed approach against other established methods available in the literature. The presented numerical examples positively verify the robustness of the proposed method.