An Investigation on the Effectiveness of Cross-Sectional Tapering for Broadband Non-Reflective Traveling Waves Generation in Beams With Passive Discontinuities

Inspired by the dynamic behavior of the basilar membrane in the mammalian auditory system, the non-reflective traveling wave phenomenon is studied in a finite tapered cantilever beam. The goal of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of tapering the geometry to relax the design sensitivity to achieve such behavior as compared to the uniform geometry. The Galerkin method is used to derive the discretized form of the equation of motion. The results of this study suggest that tapering can be effective in improving the robustness of the design space in which traveling waves can be obtained.