The research on the propagation of surface waves has received considerable attention in order to improve the efficiency and natural life of the surface acoustic wave devices, but the investigation on complex Rayleigh waves in functionally graded piezoelectric material (FGPM) is quite limited. In this paper, an improved Laguerre orthogonal function technique is presented to solve the problem of the complex Rayleigh waves in an FGPM half-space, which can obtain not only the solution of purely real values but also that of purely imaginary and complex values. The three-dimensional dispersion curves are generated in complex space to explore the influence of the gradient coefficients. The displacement amplitude distributions are plotted to investigate the conversion process from complex wave mode to propagating wave mode. Finally, the curves of phase velocity to the ratio of wave loss decrements are illustrated, which offers extra convenience for finding the high phase velocity points where the complex wave loss is near zero.

The complex Rayleigh waves play an important role in the energy conversion efficiency of magneto-electro-elastic devices, so it is necessary to explore the wave propagation characteristics for the better applications in engineering. This paper modifies the Laguerre orthogonal polynomial to investigate the complex Rayleigh waves propagating in nonhomogeneous magneto-electro-elastic half-spaces. The improved method simplifies the calculation process by incorporating boundary conditions into the constitutive relations, shortens the solving time by transforming the solution of wave equation to an eigenvalue problem, and obtains all wave modes, including real and imaginary and complex wavenumbers. The three-dimensional curves of full frequency spectrum and phase velocities are presented for the better description of the conversion from complex Rayleigh wave modes to real wave ones; besides, the displacement distributions, electric and magnetic potential curves are obtained in thickness and propagation directions, respectively. Numerical results are analyzed and discussed elaborately in three cases: variation of nonhomogeneous coefficients, absence of magnetism, and absence of electricity. The results can be used to optimize and fabricate the acoustic surface wave devices of the nonhomogeneous magneto-electro-elastic materials.

The Legendre polynomial approach has been proposed to solve wave propagation in multilayered flat plates and functionally graded structures for more than ten years, but it can deal with a multilayered plate only when the material properties of two adjacent layers do not change significantly. In this paper, an improvement of the Legendre polynomial approach is proposed to solve wave propagation in what, from now on, we will call general multilayered piezoelectric cylindrical plates, to mean indifferently with or without very dissimilar materials. Detailed formulations are given to highlight the differences from the conventional Legendre polynomial approach. Through numerical comparisons among the exact solution (from the reverberation-ray matrix), the conventional polynomial approach, and the improved polynomial approach, the validity of the proposed approach is illustrated. Then, the influences of the radius-to-thickness ratio on the dispersion curves, the stress, and electric displacement distributions are discussed. It is shown that the conventional orthogonal polynomial approach cannot obtain correct continuous normal stress and normal electric displacement shapes, unlike the improved orthogonal polynomial approach, which overcomes these drawbacks. It is also found that three factors determine the distribution of mechanical energy and electric energy at higher frequencies: the radius-to-thickness ratio, the wave speed of component material, and the position of the component material.

A double Legendre polynomial quadrature-free method was presented to analyze axisymmetric free vibration problem for axially polarized Functionally Graded Piezoelectric circular plates. The present analytical method directly incorporated the boundary conditions into the vibration control equation. At the same time, the mechanical displacements and the electrical potential were defined as the form of double Legendre polynomials series. Then, the solution of eigenvalue was used to obtain the resonant/anti-resonant frequencies. In view of including lots of time-consuming integration calculations, the quadrature-free process was deduced to improve the computational efficiency. The valid of the presented method was verified by the comparison with the existing literature and the commercial software COMSOL. Furthermore, the effects of the material gradient index, radius-thickness ratio on the frequencies, and electro-mechanical coupling efficient were studied. The results showed that the frequency-radius product tends to be stable with the increase of the radius-thickness ratio, and the increase of gradient index led to the increase of the frequency-radius product.