Inerter-based Elastic Metamaterials for Band Gap at Extremely Low Frequency

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that inerter-based elastic metamaterials can create ultra-low frequency band gaps, enabling vibration control with very small unit cells relative to the wavelength, advancing structural vibration mitigation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel inerter-based design that significantly improves ultra-low frequency band gap formation compared to traditional metamaterials.

Findings

Inerter-connected metamaterials exhibit superior ultra-low frequency band gaps.

Unit cell size can be four or more orders smaller than the wavelength.

Design insights for next-generation vibration mitigation metamaterials.

Abstract

We reveal the unique and fundamental advantage of inerter-based elastic metamaterials by a comparative study among different configurations. When the embedded inerter is connected to the matrix material on both ends, the metamaterial shows definite superiority in forming a band gap in the ultra-low frequency -- equivalently the ultra-long wavelength -- regime, where the unit cell size can be four or more orders of magnitude smaller than the operating wavelength. In addition, our parametric studies in both one and two dimensions pave the way towards designing next-generation metamaterials for structural vibration mitigation.