Analysis of wave propagation in cylindrical pipes with local inhomogeneities

In this paper, we present a numerical approach to study the guided elastic wave propagation in cylindrical pipes with local inhomogeneities. A hybrid wave finite element (WFE) and finite element (FE) technique is introduced to investigate the dispersion and wave scattering in pipes by taking full advantage of the existing FE codes. Dynamic reduction technique is employed to improve the computational efficiency, which is particularly suitable for the pipes with standard local features. Numerical examples indicate that the proposed technique provides an effective way to calculate the dispersion relationship and the scattered field. Both the axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric wave scattering problems are considered.