Open Access

A laser-operated, angle-tunable transducer was employed to excite selectively elastic waves guided along the apex of a solid wedge. The propagation of wedge waves at anisotropic monocrystalline silicon edges with different symmetry properties was studied by optical detection. The reduced symmetry in crystals, as compared to isotropic media, causes a number of new features, such as the existence of supersonic leaky wedge waves, tilted spatial pulse profiles, and other peculiarities of their localization. Experimental and theoretical results are presented for three different types of symmetry configurations: the wedge symmetric about its midplane, the wedge symmetric about the plane normal to its apex line, and the wedge symmetric about one of its faces. The experiments include accurate measurements of the phase velocity and the wave field distribution, providing information on localization and coupling of wedge waves with other waves. Theoretically, the wedge waves were treated by the Laguerre function method, extended to modes that are not localized at the tip of the wedge. This approach allowed an accurate description of the observed localized and leaky wedge waves in anisotropic wedges.