Propagation of bending waves in phononic crystal thin plates with a point defect

In this paper, the band structures of bending waves in a phononic crystal thin plate with a point defect are studied using an improved plane wave expansion method combined with the supercell technique. In particular, a phononic crystal thin plate composed of an array of circular crystalline Al2O3 cylinders embedded in an epoxy matrix with a square lattice is considered in detail. Full band gaps are shown. When a point defect is introduced, the bending waves are highly localized at or near the defect, resulting in defect modes. The frequency and number of the defect modes are strongly dependent on the filling fraction of the system and the size of the point defect. The defect bands appear from the upper edge of the gap and move to the middle of the gap as the defect size is reduced. For a given defect, the frequencies of the defect bands increase as the filling fraction increases. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.