Vibro-acoustic response of an elliptical plate-cavity coupled system to external shock loads

A general fully coupled three-dimensional vibro-acoustic model is developed to investigate the forced non-stationary acousto-structural response of a thin elastic plate of elliptical planform which is backed by a reverberant, rigid, and finite (closed) elliptic cylindrical acoustic enclosure, while under the action of general external transverse loads of arbitrary temporal and spatial variations. The Laplace transform with respect to the time coordinate is invoked, and the classical method of separation of variables in elliptic coordinates is used to obtain the transformed solutions as a linear combination of even and odd modes in terms of products of radial and angular Mathieu functions. A linear system of coupled algebraic equations is ultimately obtained, which is truncated and then solved numerically by implementing Durbin’s numerical Laplace transform inversion scheme. Detailed numerical simulations are conducted for the temporal histories of plate center-point displacement and on-axis cavity acoustic pressure for air-coupled elliptic aluminum plates of selected aspect ratios when subjected to external loadings of practical interest (i.e., an impulsive point load, a uniformly distributed pulse load, and a blast load). Also, acoustic radiation into the backing enclosure is examined by using appropriate 2D images of the internal sound field for selected cavity depths and plate eccentricities. The presented results confirm that the acousto-elastic characteristics of the coupled plate-cavity system are significantly influenced by the plate aspect ratio, cavity depth and the transverse loading configuration. Validity of the work is established through the computations made by using a commercial finite element package.