A probabilistic study of reflection and transmission coefficients of random anisotropic elastic plates

•We analyze wave reflection and transmission through anisotropic elastic plates in the probabilistic framework.•The effects of material’s heterogeneity on reflected and transmitted waves are investigated.•The highlighting effects of the uncertainty of elasticity properties on the reflection and transmission coefficients are analyzed for different angles of incidence.

This paper presents a probabilistic framework to analyze wave reflection and transmission through anisotropic elastic plates. The elastic plate is sandwiched between two homogeneous fluids and has randomly varied elastic properties in the through-thickness direction. By introducing a stochastic model for quantitative description of heterogeneous elastic properties in the plate, the effects of material heterogeneity on reflected and transmitted waves may be investigated from a probability point of view. The reflection and transmission coefficients are computed via the semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) method. A sensitivity study is presented, highlighting effects of the uncertainty of elasticity properties on the reflection and transmission coefficients measured from different angles of incidence.