Branched flows of flexural waves in non-uniform elastic plates

Abstract Flexural elastic waves and sound in solids are of great interest wide-ranging contexts such as ultrasound plates, geophysics, ocean engineering, aerospace automotive structures, musical acoustics. Despite bending being the most important for surface their propagation presence inevitable non-uniformity is poorly understood. Here we show branching focusing behaviour highly dispersive flexural travelling plates non-uniform thickness. The thickness profile has isotropically correlated spatial randomness. correlation length much larger than wavelength. location wave shows a scaling relationship with randomness, which consistent those previously reported other random media. We this analytically numerically. This suggests universality between randomness length, regardless physics question.