Third harmonic shear horizontal and Rayleigh Lamb waves in weakly nonlinear plates

The third order harmonic generation (third harmonics as well as cubic sum and difference harmonics) due to the cubic interaction of two collimated elastic waves in a homogeneous, isotropic, weakly nonlinear plate is investigated by using a fourth order expansion of strain energy density to formulate the nonlinear boundary problems. Waves with both shear horizontal (SH) and Rayleigh Lamb (RL) nature are considered as primary or tertiary wave fields. The non-zero power flux condition is evaluated using characteristic parity matrices of the cubic nonlinear forcing terms and third order harmonic mode shapes. Results indicate that waves with either SH or RL nature receive power flux from a specific pattern of primary mode interaction. Further analytical evaluation of the synchronism condition enables identification of primary SH and RL modes that are able to generate cumulative third harmonics. The primary SH modes are shown to be holo-internal-resonant with third harmonic SH fields. This simply means that all points on the primary dispersion curves are internally resonant with third harmonics, which is not the case for second harmonics. Such flexibility will be advantageous for laboratory and field measurements. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.