Effects of braces in the normal modes of linear elastic disks

Abstract

Inspired by braces in guitars that improve their structural integrity and acoustic performance, we consider linear elastic disks with braces. For the four normal modes with the lowest natural frequencies, we discussed the effect of these braces on the deformation of the disk, in particular, on the points where peak amplitudes are located. We show that for some brace parameters, the brace can improve the peak displacements, and thereby, can be considered in the design of some piezoelectric devices. Moreover, the braces considered do not significantly change the natural frequencies of the disk. We conducted the finite element modal analysis with the open-source Python library FEniCSx, while the meshes are created with the open-source finite element generator gmsh.