Transformation cloaking and radial approximations for flexural waves in elastic plates

Abstract

It is known that design of elastic cloaks is much more challenging than that of acoustic cloaks, cloaks of electromagnetic waves or scalar problems of antiplane shear. In this paper, we address fully the fourth-order problem and develop a model of a broadband invisibility cloak for channelling flexural waves in thin plates around finite inclusions. We also discuss an option to employ efficiently an elastic pre-stress and body forces to achieve such a result. An asymptotic derivation provides a rigorous link between the model in question and elastic wave propagation in thin solids. This is discussed in detail to show connection with non-symmetric formulations in vector elasticity studied in earlier work.