Partial wave basis adapted to exterior boundary conditions of an elastic plate

An approach to describing normal elastic vibration modes in confined systems is presented. In a standard treatment of the problem, the displacement field is represented by a superposition of partial waves of a general form, e.g., plane waves. The unknown coefficients of superposition are then obtained from the equation of motion and the full set of boundary conditions. In the proposed approach, the functional form of partial waves is chosen in such a way as to satisfy the boundary conditions on exterior surfaces identically, i.e., even if the unknown quantities determined by the remaining constraints are found in an approximation, numerically or analytically. Some examples of solutions for composite elastic plates are discussed to illustrate the efficiency of the approach and its relevance for applications.