Reflection and Transmission of Acoustic Waves Across Contact Interfaces

Abstract

A linearized model for hysteretic acoustic nonlinearity of imperfectly joined interface is proposed and analyzed by using Coulomb damping to investigate the characteristics of the reflection and transmission coefficients for harmonic waves at the contact interface. Closed crack is modeled as nonwelded interface that has nonlinear discontinuity condition in displacement across its boundary. Based on the hysteretic contact stiffness of the contact interface, the reflected and transmitted waves are determined by deriving the tractions on both sides of the interface in terms of the discontinuous displacements across the interface. It is found that the amplitudes of the reflected and transmitted waves are dependent on the frequency and the hysteretic stiffness. As the frequency of the incident wave increases, the higher reflection and lower transmission are obtained. It also shows that the hysteresis of the interface increases the reflection coefficient, but reduces the transmission coefficient. A fatigue crack is also made in aluminum specimen to demonstrate these characteristics of the reflection and transmission of contact interfaces.