The Complex Rayleigh Waves in a Functionally Graded Piezoelectric Half-Space: An Improvement of the Laguerre Polynomial Approach

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.