Transformation Cloaking in Elastic Plates

Abstract

In this paper we formulate the problem of elastodynamic transformation cloaking for Kirchhoff-Love plates and elastic plates with both the in-plane and out-of-plane displacements. A cloaking transformation maps the boundary-value problem of an isotropic and homogeneous elastic plate (virtual problem) to that of an anisotropic and inhomogeneous elastic plate with a hole surrounded by a cloak that is to be designed (physical problem). For Kirchhoff-Love plates, the (out-of-plane) governing equations of the virtual plate is transformed to those of the physical plate up to an unknown scalar field. In doing so, one finds the initial stress and the initial tangential body force for the physical plate, along with a set of constraints that we call cloaking compatibility equations. These constraints involve the cloaking transformation, the unknown scalar field, and the elastic constants of the virtual plate. It is noted that the cloaking map needs to satisfy certain conditions on the outer boundary of the cloak and the surface of the hole. In particular, the cloaking map needs to fix the outer boundary of the cloak up to the third order. Assuming a generic radial cloaking map, we show that cloaking a circular hole in Kirchoff-Love plates is not possible; the cloaking compatibility equations and the boundary conditions that the cloaking map needs to satisfy are the obstruction to cloaking. Next, relaxing the pure bending assumption, the transformation cloaking problem of an elastic plate in the presence of in-plane and out-of-plane displacements is formulated. In this case, there are two sets of governing equations that need to be simultaneously transformed under the cloaking map. We show that cloaking a circular hole is not possible for a general radial cloaking map; the cloaking compatibility equations and the boundary conditions that the cloaking map needs to satisfy obstruct cloaking.