Variational method for computing surface acoustic pressure on vibrating bodies, applied to transversely oscillating disks

A variational principle derived from the Kirchhoff-Helmholtz integral relation can be applied to acoustic radiation and diffraction problems. An illustrative example discussed here is that of sound radiation from a flat rigid circular disk in transverse oscillation. The variational formulation has the surface pressure as the unknown variable, with the normal velocity of the surface taken as given. The Rayleigh-Ritz method used in determining approximate solutions in terms of truncated expansions of basis functions encounters some numerical problems in the evaluation of integrals with singular integrands. The integrands are nevertheless integrable and techniques are described for handling the singularities. Another potential source of difficulty is that the tangential derivative of the surface pressure for the exact solution must be infinite at the edge of the disk. One makes use of prior knowledge of such a fact by using basis functions with the correct dependence on radial distance near the disk edge. Because basis functions in the Rayleigh-Ritz procedure have been selected with the aid of prior insight into the nature of the true solution, accurate results are obtained with a relatively small number of basis functions. The numerical solutions agree well with results calculated by Leitner in 1949.