Localisation of elastic waves in two-dimensional randomly disordered solid phononic crystals

Combined with the supercell technique, the plane wave expansion method is used to calculate the band structures of the two-dimensional solid–solid phononic crystals with the random disorders in either radius or location of the scatterers. Phononic systems with plumbum scatterers embedded in an epoxy matrix are calculated in detail. The influences of the disorder degree on the band structures for both anti-plane and in-plane wave modes are investigated. It is found that, with increase of the disorder degree, the band gaps become narrower with more flat bands appearing in the gaps. Both displacement distribution and response spectra show that at the flat bands, elastic waves are localised due to the presence of the disorder. Wave localisation is more pronounced at the flat bands near the lower/upper edge for the radius/location disorder. Wave propagation and localisation in a randomly disordered system with a point defect is also studied. The influence of the disorder on the point-defect state is discussed. The results show that the disorder can tune the frequencies of the defect states. It is particularly noticed that the double degenerate mode appearing within the gap of the mixed in-plane waves is split up into two separated ones when the random disorder is introduced into the system. Generally, the influence of the disorder is more pronounced for the mixed in-plane modes than the anti-plane modes. The analysis of this paper is relevant to the assessment of the influences of manufacture errors on wave behaviours in phononic crystals as well as the possible control of wave propagation by intentionally introducing disorders into periodic systems.