Fluid-loaded plate. Use complex amplitudes with time dependence and take the velocity potential in the fluid above the elastic plate to be . Let and be the undisturbed mass density and speed of sound. The linearized Euler equations give ; the kinematic boundary condition is . We model loading from one fluid half-space, with no fluid loading on the other face. Loading by identical fluids on both faces instead doubles the fluid term below.
Define the Fourier transform and its inverse by
The Sommerfeld radiation condition selects , with and . Here and in the diffraction calculation below, the outgoing square root is specified by first taking . Draw a vertical cut upwards from and another downwards from , and put
Thus is analytic in the upper half-plane and in the lower half-plane. In the real-frequency limit,
The Fourier transform contour follows the real axis with the limiting-absorption pole prescriptions. In particular, an outgoing propagating component has positive vertical wavenumber.
The kinematic boundary condition gives , so . Eliminating the fluid pressure from the bending balance gives the line-forced fluid-loaded bending plate kernel
For harmonic line force amplitude at the origin, the plate displacement and fluid velocity potential are therefore
An arbitrary localized loading replaces by its Fourier transform. This representation both calculates the response and identifies its different wave components through poles and branch points.
For an observer , , with , the method of steepest descent uses the saddle point . At fixed angle away from grazing, the acoustic far field is
The spreading is that of cylindrical acoustic waves. The phase velocity parallel to the plate is : components with are supersonic in that sense and radiate, whereas those with are subsonic and exponentially decay normally to the plate. The latter have reactive fluid loading and zero mean normal acoustic energy flux.
There is also a real guided root . Indeed, , , and
The residue theorem then gives an outgoing displacement contribution . It transports energy along the plate while its fluid field decays as . Other zeros on continued sheets can describe leaky or resonant waves; branch point contributions describe near and grazing fields. A fixed-angle acoustic far field expansion is not uniform near the plate, where these components can matter.
For a propagating spectral component, write . Its upward normal velocity is and its pressure is . Applying Parseval's identity to the time-averaged acoustic energy flux gives the upward power per unit length of the forcing line:
Equivalently, the integrand is with prefactor . Integrating the radial acoustic intensity of the far field over a semicircle gives the same expression. The input power also feeds guided waves along the plate, so it must not be identified with alone.
Rigid half-plane diffraction. Suppress the time factor and assume . Write , , and denote the incident spatial field by . The Helmholtz equation, Sommerfeld radiation condition, and square-root branches are as above. Across the open positive axis the scattered field and its normal derivative are continuous. Across the rigid negative axis its normal derivative is also continuous, while its potential can jump. Let be this jump, supported on . The transformed scattered field is
The jump transform is analytic in the upper half-plane. The absence of an even scattered component follows from derivative continuity and the outgoing condition. Its normal derivative on either face is .
On the negative axis this derivative must cancel . Since the Half-range Fourier transform of is , the Wiener-Hopf equation has the form
where is the transform of an unknown function supported on and analytic in the lower half-plane. The incident pole lies below the Fourier contour. Divide by and perform pole subtraction in a Wiener-Hopf equation:
The first term is upper analytic and the second lower analytic, since the latter's apparent pole cancels. Equality of the two continued sides gives an entire function. The finite-energy edge condition, with , and the decay of the transforms at infinity force that function to vanish by Liouville's theorem. Consequently
This is the Wiener-Hopf solution of rigid half-plane diffraction with the present transform and time conventions.
Deforming to a steepest descent contour gives a residue from the incident pole precisely when . At that pole ; its residue produces
Thus the total geometrical optics field is plus a reflected wave in the upper reflection region; in the lower shadow region the scattered residue cancels , and outside that shadow the direct incident wave remains. This gives both the amplitude and the spatial support of the geometrical optics fields rather than merely naming a reflected wave.
For , , , the saddle contribution uses and . The diffracted wave is
The total field is to this order. This far-field expression applies away from the shadow/reflection boundaries . There the pole and saddle coalesce, and a uniform Fresnel integral approximation replaces the divergent separate terms by a smooth transition. The exact contour integral remains well defined.
Take , put and , and suppress the common factor . The upper-half-plane incident acoustic plane wave is . A rigid zero-thickness screen imposes the same normal-derivative cancellation on both faces; the scattered velocity potential is consequently odd in . Across the open part it is continuous, so its trace there is zero. These complementary half-line data are what make the Wiener-Hopf method applicable.
Use the Fourier transform , with inverse exponential . The outgoing Helmholtz equation solution is for , where has on the propagating interval and positive real part on evanescent components. The limiting absorption principle supplies the contour prescription. The transform of the trace supported on is analytic below the contour. Let be the analytic upper transform of the unknown derivative on . The prescribed derivative on has transform
Since the upper normal derivative is , the Wiener-Hopf equation is
For the Wiener-Hopf factorization, choose analytic above and analytic below. Their branch cuts go into the opposite half-planes, with . Dividing by and performing pole subtraction in a Wiener-Hopf equation gives
The forcing pole is allocated to the lower analytic part; the second quotient has a removable pole and is upper analytic. Subtracting these parts leaves a common entire function. The finite-energy edge condition excludes an inverse-square-root singularity in the potential: its odd scattered trace is , so . The normal derivative on the open side can be , giving . Both sides of the entire remainder tend to zero. The Liouville theorem sets that remainder to zero, giving the explicit Wiener-Hopf solution of rigid half-plane diffraction:
The scattered field on either side of the screen is therefore
Its forcing-pole residue at is . Deforming to the outgoing steepest descent contour crosses this pole precisely when , where , and . The residue contributes . Thus, away from transition boundaries, the scattered geometrical optics field is
Adding the incident acoustic plane wave gives incident plus unit specular reflection in the upper reflected sector, just the incident wave in the remaining illuminated sectors, and zero in the lower shadow sector. The geometrical shadow boundaries also follow directly by tracing a straight ray to : the reflected ray hits the screen at , and the transmitted incident ray crosses the open part at .
For the diffracted contribution, the outgoing phase has saddle , value , and second derivative . Stationary phase therefore supplies . Substituting , and using , gives
The full asymptotic scattered field is . The angular edge-wave expression is not uniform on the geometrical boundaries. There is also a sign inconsistency in the supplied saddle formula: with its printed inverse exponential , the outgoing saddle is , not . The consistent inverse convention used above gives the requested outgoing field without that ambiguity.
Take a cut-on mode with , put and , so , , and initially take . The acoustic waveguide mode splits into two acoustic plane waves:
At the upper edge , the upward-going constituent is incident from below. Use the reflected local coordinate ; its incident potential becomes , with local incidence angle . At the lower edge use and the downward-going constituent; it has the same local incident amplitude and incidence angle. At each wall the other constituent is the geometrical optics reflection of this incident half-amplitude, so it must not be counted again as an independent incident wave at the same edge.
Let . For a far observer, the upper and lower local observation angles are and , and their distances are and . Applying the Wiener-Hopf solution of rigid half-plane diffraction separately gives
The sign difference is the reversal of the upper-edge transverse coordinate. Their sum is the leading independent-edge radiation from an open planar duct:
Restore if a time-dependent potential is desired. This is the leading large- approximation, neglecting further diffraction between edges, and assumes a far-field distance as well as . It is not a uniform approximation for a mode approaching cutoff. The zero mode follows as the grazing-incidence limit ; its beam-direction limit is treated separately below.