Guided waves in a circular duct containing an assembly of circular cylinders

This paper provides an analytical scheme to calculate the admissible acoustic propagation modes of fluid in a circular duct containing an assembly of circular cylinders, as might occur in gas-cooled fast breeder reactors and advanced gas-cooled reactors. The duct wall and cylinders are assumed to be stationary, and their axes are assumed to be parallel to each other. The solution to the acoustic wave equation is expressed in a sum of the partial fluid velocity potentials associated with each rod co-ordinate and duct co-ordinate. The technique of transformation of cylindrical wave functions is then used to solve the boundary value problem. Two kinds of acoustic boundary conditions are considered, acoustically hard and acoustically soft, respectively.