Rainbow trapping of ultrasonic guided waves in chirped phononic crystal plates.

The rainbow trapping effect has been demonstrated in electromagnetic and acoustic waves. In this study, rainbow trapping of ultrasonic guided waves is achieved in chirped phononic crystal plates that spatially modulate the dispersion, group velocity, and stopband. The rainbow trapping is related to the progressively slowing group velocity, and the extremely low group velocity near the lower boundary of a stopband that gradually varies in chirped phononic crystal plates. As guided waves propagate along the phononic crystal plate, waves gradually slow down and finally stop forward propagating. The energy of guided waves is concentrated at the low velocity region near the stopband. Moreover, the guided wave energy of different frequencies is concentrated at different locations, which manifests as rainbow guided waves. We believe implementing the rainbow trapping will open new paradigms for guiding and focusing of guided waves. Moreover, the rainbow guided waves with energy concentration and spatial separation of frequencies may have potential applications in nondestructive evaluation, spatial wave filtering, energy harvesting, and acoustofluidics.