Figure 1

The set up of N plates joined together and a periodic segment of a plate with two different alternating plies modelled with three-dimensional finite elements. \(A^{\pm }_{1,N}\) are the amplitudes of incoming and outgoing waves travelling from infinity towards the junction and from the junction to infinity, respectively. The degrees of freedom are grouped into internal \({\mathbf {q}}_I\), edge \({\mathbf {q}}_L\), \({\mathbf {q}}_R\), \({\mathbf {q}}_B\), \({\mathbf {q}}_T\) and corner \({\mathbf {q}}_{LB}\), \({\mathbf {q}}_{RB}\), \({\mathbf {q}}_{LT}\), \({\mathbf {q}}_{RT}\) degrees of freedom.