The weak form method for acoustoelastic simulation with arbitrary prestress field

Abstract

Acoustoelastic theory has been widely used to evaluate the residual stress (or prestress). However, most of the research remains focused on plate under simple tensile stress condition. In this paper, a new approach is proposed: the use of weak form PDE modeling for acoustoelastic simulation. This method can perform acoustoelastic simulation for complex model with intricate prestress field. In the theory part, the weak form of acoustoelastic theory and semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) method is derived. In the numerical simulation part, two cases: the propagation direction is perpendicular to the prestress and parallel to the prestress are presented. The results are compared with the superposition of partial bulk wave (SPBW) method and the previously commonly used Effective Elastic Constants (EEC) method. The results show that the method proposed in this paper is highly accurate. Compared to the EEC method, this approach has no theoretical flaws and aligns more closely with the theoretical solution, especially in the low frequency range where the EEC method’s results are almost incorrect. This study provides an accurate method for the simulation of acoustoelasticity.