Acoustic wave polarization and energy flow in periodic beam lattice materials

The free propagation of acoustic plane waves through cellular periodic materials is generally accompanied by a flow of mechanical energy across the adjacent cells. The paper focuses on the energy transport related to dispersive waves propagating through non-dissipative microstructured materials. The generic microstructure of the periodic cell is described by a beam lattice model, suitably reduced to the minimal space of dynamic degrees-of-freedom. The linear eigenproblem governing the wave propagation is stated and the complete eigensolution is considered to study both the real-valued dispersion functions and the complex-valued waveforms of the propagating elastic waves. First, a complete family of nondimensional quantities (polarization factors) is proposed to quantify the linear polarization or quasi-polarization, according to a proper energetic criterion. Second, a vector variable related to the periodic cell is introduced to assess the directional flux of mechanical energy, in analogy to the Umov–Poynting vector related to the material point in solid mechanics. The physical-mathematical relation between the energy flux and the velocity of the energy transport is recognized. The formal equivalence between the energy and the group velocity is pointed out, according to the mechanical assumptions. Finally, all the theoretical developments are successfully applied to the prototypical beam lattice material characterized by a periodic tetrachiral microstructure. As case study, the tetrachiral material offers interesting examples of perfect and nearly-perfect linear polarization. Furthermore, the nonlinear dependence of the energy fluxes on the elastic waveforms is discussed with respect to the acoustic and optical surfaces featuring the energy spectrum of the material. As final remark, the occurrence of negative refraction phenomena is found to characterize the high-frequency optical surface of the frequency spectrum.