A GENERALIZED APPROACH FOR THE ACOUSTIC RADIATION FROM A BAFFLED OR UNBAFFLED PLATE WITH ARBITRARY BOUNDARY CONDITIONS, IMMERSED IN A LIGHT OR HEAVY FLUID

Abstract The present paper is dedicated to the study of the radiation of a baffled and/or unbaffled plate with arbitrary boundary conditions. The proposed work deals with a complete and rigorous fluid–structure coupling. A Rayleigh–Ritz approach is used to develop the plate deflection and, in the unbaffled case, the sound pressure jump function. A suitable set of trial functions is proposed. It allows to obtain only one genetic numerical code for all the boundary conditions and—a key aspect of the formulation—for both the baffled and the unbaffled plate. An efficient numerical scheme is proposed for the computation of the radiation impedance coefficients. A good agreement is found with a numerical approach based on the boundary element method. Validation with experimental results is also presented. The present formulation provides a useful tool to perform a clear and systematic comparison between the baffled and the unbaffled plate.