Energy trapping of thickness-shear vibration modes of elastic plates with functionally graded materials

Energy trapping has important applications in the design of thickness-shear resonators. Considerable efforts have been made for the effective utilization and improvement of energy trapping with variations of plate configurations, such as adding electrodes and contouring. As a new approach in seeking improved energy trapping feature, we analyze thickness-shear vibrations in an elastic plate with functionally graded material (FGM) of in-plane variation of mechanical properties, such as elastic constants and density. A simple and general equation governing the thickness-shear modes is derived from a variational analysis. A plate with piecewise constant material properties is analyzed as an example. It is shown that such a plate can support thickness-shear vibration modes with obvious energy trapping. Bechmann's number for the existence of only one trapped mode also can be determined accordingly