IDENTIFYING CRITICAL ELASTIC SCALES IN STRUCTURAL-ACOUSTIC MODELS

The level of detail required for accurate structural acoustic modeling of fluid loaded structures remains an issue of significant debate. An alytical solutions are rarely available, and discrete numerical soluti ons are typically too complex for ready extraction of physical underst anding. In addition, numerical techniques introduce their own explicit scales through the minimum mesh dimension. However, the wavenumber ba sed formulation of the surface variational principle describes the sur face pressure and displacement as a comparatively small set of interac ting waves. Coupling the SVP with distributed methods of representing structural attachment features provides a means to introduce, control, and investigate features of differing scales. We present here a techn ique for assessing the critical resolution scales for a fluid loaded t wo-dimensional plate. For feature attachments, we consider a line-mass elastically suspended by a line-spring from the wetted plate. The exc itation applied to the plate is taken as a concentrated harmonic force . With the excitation held fixed, the influence of the scale of the fe ature spatial representation on the radiated power is assessed.