Steven L. Means
Graduate Prog. in Acoust., New ARL Bldg., Penn State Univ., University Park, PA 16801
There is a branch of the dispersion curve of fluid-loaded cylindrical shells in which fluid mass and an ``effective'' spring stiffness balance at low frequencies. This leads to a surface wave with a wave number which becomes increasingly close to the acoustic wave number as the frequency tends to zero. When such a surface wave, propagating along the axis of the cylinder, is incident on a shell discontinuity, energy is scattered back along the cylinder's axis and into the surrounding fluid. The present paper examines the balance of the energy between the reflected and the scattered waves. Comparisons are made with analogous surface waves scattered by a discontinuity of an elastic plate on an elastic foundation.