Collision enhanced hyper-damping in nonlinear elastic metamaterial

Nonlinear elastic metamaterial, a topic which has attracted extensive attention in recent years, can enable broadband vibration reduction under relatively large amplitude. The combination of damping and strong nonlinearity in metamaterials may entail auxetic effects and offer the capability for low-frequency and broadband vibration reduction. However, there exists a clear lack of proper design methods as well as a deficiency in understanding properties arising from this concept. To tackle this problem, this paper numerically demonstrates that the nonlinear elastic metamaterials, consisting of sandwich damping layers and collision resonators, can generate very robust hyper-damping effect, conducive to efficient and broadband vibration suppression. The collision-enhanced hyper damping is persistently present in a large parameter space, ranging from small to large amplitudes, and for small and large damping coefficient. The achieved robust effects greatly enlarge the application scope of nonlinear metamaterials. We report the design concept, properties and mechanisms of the hyper-damping and its effect on vibration transmission. This paper reveals new properties offered by nonlinear elastic metamaterials, and offers a robust method for achieving efficient low-frequency and broadband vibration suppression.

Elastic wave propagation in metamaterial rods with periodic shunted piezo-patches

The wave propagation attenuation in low frequencies by using piezoelectric elastic metamaterials has been developed in recent years. These piezoelectric structures exhibit abnormal properties, different from those found in nature, through the artificial design of the topology or exploring the shunt circuit parameters. In this study, the wave propagation in a 1-D elastic metamaterial rod with periodic arrays of shunted piezo-patches is investigated. This piezoelectric metamaterial rod is capable of filtering the propagation of longitudinal elastic waves over a specified range of frequency, called band gaps. The complex dispersion diagrams are obtained by the extended plane wave expansion (EPWE) and wave finite element (WFE) approaches. The comparison between these methods shows good agreement. The Bragg-type and locally resonant band gaps are opened up. The shunt circuits influence significantly the propagating and the evanescent modes. The results can be used for elastic wave attenuation using piezoelectric periodic structures.