Analytical study of dispersion relations for shear horizontal wave propagation in plates with periodic stubs

The coupled mode theory with coupling of diffraction modes and waveguide modes is usually used on the calculations of transmission and reflection coefficients for electromagnetic waves traveling through periodic sub-wavelength structures. In this paper, I extend this method to derive analytical solutions of high-order dispersion relations for shear horizontal (SH) wave propagation in elastic plates with periodic stubs. In the long wavelength regime, the explicit expression is obtained by this theory and derived specially by employing an effective medium. This indicates that the periodical stubs are equivalent to an effective homogenous layer in the long wavelength. Notably, in the short wavelength regime, high-order diffraction modes in the plate and high-order waveguide modes in the stubs are considered with modes coupling to compute the band structures. Numerical results of the coupled mode theory fit pretty well with the results of the finite element method (FEM). In addition, the band structures' evolution with the height of the stubs and the thickness of the plate shows clearly that the method can predict well the Bragg band gaps, locally resonant band gaps and high-order symmetric and anti-symmetric thickness-twist modes for the periodically structured plates. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.