Wave propagation in multilayered piezoelectric spherical plates

This paper proposes an improvement of the Legendre polynomial series method to solve the harmonic wave propagation in multilayered piezoelectric spherical plates, which are used in point-focusing transducers. The conventional Legendre polynomial method can deal with the multilayered structures only when the material properties of two adjacent layers do not change significantly and cannot obtain correctly normal stress and normal electric displacement shapes unlike the proposed improved orthogonal polynomial approach which overcomes these drawbacks. Detailed formulations are given to highlight its differences from the conventional Legendre polynomial approach. Through the comparisons of numerical results given by an exact solution (obtained from the reverberation-ray matrix method), and by the conventional polynomial approach and the improved polynomial approach, the validity of the proposed approach is illustrated. The influences of the radius-to-thickness ratio on dispersion curves, stress and electric displacement distributions are discussed. It is found that three factors determine the distribution of mechanical energy and electric energy at higher frequencies: radius-to-thickness ratio, wave speed, and position of the component material.