Nonlinear electroelastic metamaterial for low-frequency, broadband vibration mitigation

• Grant number: 20/01608-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: December 01, 2021
• End date: November 30, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Aerospace Engineering - Aerospace Structures
• Principal Investigator: Carlos de Marqui Junior
• Grantee: Jaime Alberto Mosquera Sánchez
• Supervisor: Alper Erturk
• Host Institution: Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos (EESC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Georgia Institute of Technology, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/14546-9 - Control and energy harvesting from low-frequency vibro-acoustic disturbances with smart metastructures, BP.PD

Abstract

Locally resonant metastructures have been shown to exhibit attenuation bands with limited bandwidth and intensity. Moreover, the inclusion of nonlinearities in the metastructure's resonant attachments has shown so far promising results at overcoming these limitations, as evidenced by a few recent efforts. Nonlinear metastructures exhibit a plethora of interesting dynamic phenomena, e.g., wave supratransmission, chaotic bands, discrete breathers, nonlinear resonance attenuation, multimode attenuation, and passive bandgap reconfiguration, which can be harnessed in the realization of a multi-purpose, smart structure. This research proposal aims at investigating nonlinear metastructures for vibration reduction and energy harvesting using piezoelectric resonators featuring cubic electrical devices and negative capacitances. Recent results available from moderately and strongly nonlinear piezoelectric metastructures shed light on the existence of discrete breathers that can be harnessed for energy harvesting purposes, once that, even though the nonlinear metastructure is uniform, i.e., the resonators' parameters are similar among each other, the level of lattice anharmonicity becomes high thus leveraging high-energy localized modes. Nonlinear elastic metamaterials thus emerge as promising means for realizing smart multi-purpose structures, mainly due to the possibility of creating and tuning the electromechanical attachments' properties by easily tailoring electrical components, while keeping unaltered both the geometrical and/or constitutive properties of the host structure and the resonating attachments. This research is expected to give a step further towards fully tunable metastructures for vibration reduction and energy harvesting, still realizing the unusual yet interesting dynamical and wave propagation phenomena of nonlinear acoustic metamaterials. (AU)