MATEC Web of Conferences 157, 08011 (2018) https://doi.org/10.

1051/matecconf/201815708011
MMS 2017

Numerical solution of Rayleigh-Lamb frequency

equation for real, imaginary and complex
wavenumbers
Michal Šofer1,*, Petr Ferfecki1,2, Pavel Šofer3
1
Department of Applied Mechanics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, VŠB-Technical University
of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15/2127, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
2
IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, VŠB-Technical University of Ostrava, Studentská
6231/1B, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
3
Department of Control Systems and Instrumentation, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, VŠB-
Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15/2127, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic

Abstract. Guided waves, especially Lamb waves or shear-horizontal waves, are

widely used types of waves for ultrasonic inspection of large structures. Well known
property of guided waves is their dispersive character, which means that the
propagation velocity of the particular wave mode is not only a function of physical
properties of the material, in which the wave propagates or the wave´s frequency, but
also depends on the geometry of the structure in itself. Dispersion curves provide us
the information related to the dependency between the wavenumber and the frequency
of the particular mode and can be obtained by a numerical solution of Rayleigh-Lamb
frequency equation. A solution of Rayleigh-Lamb frequency equation forms for a
given frequency and plate thickness a set of a finite number of real and pure
imaginary wavenumbers and an infinite number of complex wavenumbers. Proposed
paper presents a complete procedure of how to obtain all three kinds of wavenumbers
for a given geometry and frequency interval. The main emphasis is placed on the
effectiveness of the procedures, which are used for finding the roots of dispersion
equation for all three kinds of wavenumbers.
Keywords: Rayleigh-Lamb equation, Dispersion equation, Lamb wave

1 Introduction
Ultrasonic testing is, besides eddy current testing method, one of most commonly used non-
destructive techniques in the case of inspection of plate-like structures [1]. Guided waves,
especially Lamb waves, are ideal solution for inspection of large structures such as metal
sheets or composite structures [2]. The ability of the effective crack detection by use of
various modes of Lamb wave has been demonstrated in several publications [2-4]. The
structure of the particular mode of guided Lamb wave in itself is relatively complex
compared to the longitudinal or transversal bulk waves. This fact appears to be an
advantage, since it is possible to select a particular mode shape in order to increase the

*
Corresponding author: [email protected]
Reviewers: Jerzy Jaroszewicz, Branislav Ftorek

© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
MATEC Web of Conferences 157, 08011 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201815708011
MMS 2017

sensitivity of such mode to specific types of flaws [3]. This advantage, is however, directly
related with increased complexity of the results interpretation. In most cases, one cannot
perform further analyses without the numerical predictions, since the more modes are
present in the structure, the more information about the flaw is available with rapid increase
of the interpretation difficultness at the same time.
The main feature of guided Lamb waves is their dispersive character, defined by
dispersion curves, which describe us the dependency between the wavenumber and the
frequency of particular wave mode for given geometry. The dispersion curves in case of
single or multi-layered media can be obtained numerically and, as well as in particular
frequency range, also experimentally [3-6]. Various methods of numerical approaches for
dispersion curves computations has been published so far [3,7]. The main scope of the
article is to present fast and robust procedure for calculation a set of real, imaginary and
complex wavenumbers, which are the roots of dispersion equation, for wide range
of frequency thickness product.

2 Theory of Lamb Waves

The governing equation will be derived under plane strain condition with the assumption
of traction-free surfaces (Fig. 1).

h
x
h

Fig. 1. Geometry of the free plate

The unknown displacement vector u will be defined with the use of the Helmholtz
decomposition theorem [8,9]:

(1)

with

= 0, (2)

where x and z are spatial coordinates, and is

potential and vector function respectively and is differential operator. The equation of
motion can be expressed in terms of displacements, resulting in following form:

̈ (3)

where and denotes Lame constants, is density of the material and ̈ denotes
second time t derivate of displacement vector u. Substitution of Eq. 1 into Eq. 3 will result
in two independent governing equations for longitudinal and transversal waves:

̈ (4)

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MATEC Web of Conferences 157, 08011 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201815708011
MMS 2017

̈ (5)

where cL is the speed of longitudinal (dilatational) waves, cT is the speed of transversal

(shear) waves. The solutions of Eqs. 4 and 5 can be assumed in following forms:

(6)

where k represents wavenumber, denotes angular frequency, functions and

represent standing waves in z direction. Functions and (Eq. 6) have to be further
substituted into Eq. 4 and 5 in order to obtain final solutions for and :

(7)

(8)

where

and . (9)

, , , denotes constants dependent of boundary conditions, and represents

complex components along z axis, and represents wavenumbers of
longitudinal and transversal wave and k represents wavenumber along direction of wave
propagation. The displacements and stresses can be with help of Lame equations, Eq. 1 and
Eqs. 6-9 expressed in following form:

* +

(10)
* +

* ( ) +

( ) (11)

* ( ) +

Finally, Eqs. 10 and 11 can be split into two sets of modes according to odd or even
functions about z = 0 axis [3].
The dispersion equation, or in other words Rayleigh-Lamb frequency equation, for both
modes can be determined by applying the traction-free boundary condition
(See Fig. 1), which results in:

[ ] (12)
( )

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where +1 applies for modes of symmetric Lamb wave and -1 applies for modes of
antisymmetric Lamb wave.

3 Solution of Rayleigh-Lamb Frequency Equation

As mentioned in chapter 1, the solution of Eq. 12 for given frequency will produce a set of
finite number of propagating modes with real wavenumber, finite number of non-
propagating modes with imaginary wavenumber and an infinite number of inhomogeneous
modes with complex wavenumber [1]. In the following chapters are discussed individual
approaches of solving the Rayleigh-Lamb frequency equation for individual types of
®
wavenumbers. It has to be noted, that the entire code has been written in Matlab software.

3.1 Numerical solution for real wavenumbers

For solving the real wavenumbers, it is preferable to rewrite Eq. 12 in following form [3]:

( ) (13)

for symmetric modes and

( )
(14)

for antisymmetric modes. The procedure of finding the real roots of the dispersion
equation is the same for both modes (Eqs. 13 and 14). The robustness of the procedure is
®
based on the vectorization, which is incorporated in Matlab software. The wavenumber
vector, through which were computed the values of the left-hand side of dispersion
equations ranged from zero to , where:
(15)

where is maximum angular frequency within the computed frequency interval.

The incremental step of wavenumber interval is equal to:

(16)

the larger incremental step is suitable in case of lower values of frequency.thickness

product (approximately up to 3 MHz.mm), which delivers sufficient resolution for finding
the roots. For higher values of frequency.thickness product, it is necessary to increase the
resolution of the wavenumber vector for proper root localization. The roots of the
dispersion equation for given frequency are located at the zero crossings when the left-hand
side changes its functional value from positive to negative sign. – see Fig 2.

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Fig. 2. Functional values of the left-hand side of dispersion relation for given wavenumber interval
(left graph) and the detail of roots (right graph) for aluminium plate of cL = 6300 m/sec,
cT = 3100 m/sec and frequency.thickness = 4 MHz.mm
Resulting dispersion curves in terms of phase velocity as a function of frequency and
wavenumber as a function of frequency respectively are displayed in Fig. 3. It has to be
noted, that the dispersion curves were constructed for aluminium plate of cL = 6300 m/sec,
cT = 3100 m/sec and the thickness of the plate was equal to 8 mm. The frequency interval
has been divided into 200 steps with a solving time equal to 5.5 seconds (CPU i7 3.4 GHz,
32 GB RAM). For proper estimation of the cut-off frequencies, the number of frequency
interval division has to be refined.

Fig. 3. Dispersion curves in terms of cphase as a function of frequency (left) and wavenumber as a
function of frequency (right). The symmetric Lamb modes are represented by red dots, the
antisymmetric modes by blue dots

3.2 Numerical solution for imaginary wavenumbers

The pure imaginary wavenumbers, which represent evanescent waves, are supposed to be
in following form:
(17)

Eqs. 13 and 14 can be therefore rewritten as follows:

( ) (18)

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for symmetric modes and

( )
, (19)

for antisymmetric modes, where:

and . (20)

The entire procedure, including solution time requirements of finding the roots of Eqs.
18 and 19 is essentially the same. Figure 4 displays the pure imaginary wavenumbers for
aluminium plate of cL = 6300 m/sec, cT = 3100 m/sec and the thickness equal to 8 mm. The
symmetric Lamb modes are represented by red dots, the antisymmetric modes by blue dots.

Fig. 4. Dispersion curves in terms of kim as a function of frequency. The symmetric Lamb modes are
represented by red dots, the antisymmetric modes by blue dots

3.3 Numerical solution for complex wavenumbers

The complex wavenumbers represent inhomogeneous modes, whose amplitude decreases
exponentially with distance. Let´s suppose the complex wavenumber in following form:
(21)

When substituting Eq. 21 into the exponential representation of vertical displacement as

a solution of the 1D wave equation: , we´ll have:
(22)

which expresses us the wave travelling from left to right with exponentially decreasing
amplitude A according to increasing x-coordinate. Eqs. 9 have to be therefore modified in
following way:

,
(23)
.

With respect to the resulting form of the complex components defined by Eq. 23, the
solutions for complex wavenumbers, given by Eq. 13 for symmetric modes and Eq. 14 for
antisymmetric modes cannot be solved independently for real and imaginary part of the
complex wavenumber. Therefore, for a given frequency.thickness product, the left-hand
sides of dispersion equations (Eq. 13 and 14) need to be evaluated with respect of two
variables – kreal and kim.

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With Matlab´s incorporated Meshgrid function, which is also supported by, above
mentioned, vectorization property, it is possible to relatively quickly and efficiently obtain
the zero crossings for the real and imaginary parts of left-hand side of the dispersion
relations for symmetric and antisymmetric modes. Figure 5 displays us the evaluated real
part of left-hand side of dispersion equation for symmetric modes for particular value of
frequency.thickness product.

Fig. 5. Real part of left-hand side of dispersion equation (symmetric mode) in case of aluminium plate
of cL = 6300 m/sec, cT = 3100 m/sec, thickness of 8 mm and frequency equal to 0.2 MHz
The resulting real and imaginary parts of complex wavenumbers are given by the
intersections between the solution of the real and imaginary parts of left-hand side of the
dispersion relation for particular mode and frequency.thickness product (See Fig. 6). As
mentioned before, the solution of the dispersion equation will give an infinite set of
complex wavenumbers.

Fig. 6. Real and imaginary parts of complex wavenumbers in case of aluminium plate of
cL = 6300 m/sec, cT = 3100 m/sec, thickness of 8 mm and frequency equal to 0.2 MHz
In our case, we will present the results for aluminium plate of cL = 6300 m/sec,
cT = 3100 m/sec, thickness of 8 mm and the frequency interval was ⟩ , divided
into 100 steps with a solving time equal to 9.2 seconds (CPU i7 3.4 GHz, 32 GB RAM).
The ranges for real and imaginary parts of complex wavenumbers were within

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〈 〉 . The incremental step of wavenumber vector, for both the real and
imaginary part, was equal to max(kim/real).10-3 m-1. Fig. 7 displays the real and the
corresponding imaginary parts of complex wavenumbers for above-mentioned input
parameters.

B C

B
A

Fig. 7. Real (left) and imaginary (right) parts of complex wavenumbers in case of aluminium plate of
cL = 6300 m/sec, cT = 3100 m/sec, thickness of 8 mm and frequency interval of ⟩ . Capital
letters denotes corresponding real and imaginary parts

Conclusion
Dispersion curves are an indispensable tool in case of wave scattering problems [1, 9, 10]
or problematics of wave propagation. The main aim of this paper was to present an overall
overview of the procedures of finding the real, imaginary and complex wavenumbers for
given material parameters and frequency.thickness interval. The procedures of finding the
individual types of wavenumbers have been written in Matlab software with incorporation
of functions, which support the vectorised operations. Thanks to this fact, there was no
extra need to put emphasis on the proper selection of the wavenumber intervals in order to
decrease the number of steps, related to the interval range, with the aim of reducing the
computational time. The entire set consisting from all three types of wavenumbers can be
for given material parameters and frequency range with reasonable division obtained within
20 seconds. Currently, authors are working on development of more time-efficient
algorithm in order to apply the results with cooperation of Lamb wave structural health
monitoring for various experiments [11-16] and also for further application in case of
composite structures [17].

This work was supported by Specific Research (SP2017/106 and SP2017/136) and by The Ministry of
Education, Youth and Sports from the National Programme of Sustainability II (LQ1602). The
support is acknowledged.

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