Abstract

Extensive work has been done on the vibration characteristics of perfectly periodic structures. Disorder in the periodic pattern has been found to lead to localization in one-dimensional periodic structures. It is important to understand localization because it causes energy to be concentrated near the disorder and may cause an overestimation of structural damping. A numerical study is conducted to obtain a better understanding of localization. It is found that any mode, even the first, can localize due to the presence of small imperfections.