Mutual Interactions of Lamb Waves in Nonlinear Elastic Plates

The mutual interactions of Lamb waves in nonlinear elastic plates are studied in this article. Many researchers have investigated the interactions of Lamb wave modes at nonlinear higher harmonics. However, little is known about nonlinearity-driven Lamb modulations from two primary modes with different frequencies. In this study, the existence of symmetric or antisymmetric mode due to Lamb wave mutual interactions is firstly theoretically formulated. Then, an approach is proposed to evaluate the intensity of phase velocity matching for selecting primary modes. Finally, the characteristics of the modulated wave generation are investigated and demonstrated. The generation of modulated waves in an aluminum plate and fatigue crack can be detected by mutual interactions of Lamb waves. The main contribution of this work is the proposed mutual interaction theory of Lamb waves in fatigue plates, which can guide fatigue detection in the metal plate.