Experimental Demonstration of Broadband Reconfigurable Mechanical Nonreciprocity

TL;DR

This paper presents the first experimental broadband mechanical waveguide that can be reconfigured to exhibit nonreciprocal wave propagation using spatiotemporal stiffness modulation, with potential applications in phononics and wave control.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, stable, and reconfigurable mechanical nonreciprocity system based on piezoelectric stiffness modulation, demonstrated through experiments, simulations, and analytical methods.

Findings

Successful experimental demonstration of broadband mechanical nonreciprocity.

Reconfigurable system stable over a broad frequency range.

Potential applications in phononic devices and wave control.

Abstract

Breaking reciprocity has recently gained significant attention due to its broad range of applications in engineering systems. Here, we introduce the first experimental demonstration of a broadband mechanical beam waveguide, which can be reconfigured to represent wave nonreciprocity. This is achieved by using spatiotemporal stiffness modulation with piezoelectric patches in a closed-loop controller. Using a combination of analytical methods, numerical simulations, and experimental measurements, we show that contrary to the conventional shunted piezoelectrics or nonlinearity based methods, our setup is stable, less complicated, reconfigurable, and precise over a broad range of frequencies. Our reconfigurable nonreciprocal system has potential applications in phononic logic, wave diodes, energy trapping, and localization.