Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

The first part of this talk will review our recent efforts on the electroelastodynamics of smart structures for various applications ranging from nonlinear energy harvesting, bio-inspired actuation, and acoustic power transfer to elastic wave guiding and vibration attenuation via metamaterials. We will discuss how to exploit nonlinear dynamic phenomena for frequency bandwidth enhancement to outperform narrowband linear-resonant devices in applications such as vibration energy harvesting for wireless electronic components. We will also cover inherent nonlinearities (material and internal/external dissipative), and their interactions with intentionally designed nonlinearities, as well as electrical circuit nonlinearities. Electromechanical modeling efforts will be presented, and approximate analysis results using the method of harmonic balance will be compared with experimental measurements. Our recent efforts on phononic crystal-enhanced elastic wave guiding and harvesting, wideband vibration attenuation via locally resonant metamaterials, contactless acoustic power transfer, bifurcation suppression using nonlinear circuits, and exploiting size effects via strain-gradient induced polarization (flexoelectricity) in centrosymmetric elastic dielectrics will be summarized. The second part of the talk, which will be given by Chris Sugino (Research Assistant and PhD Student), will be centered on low-frequency vibration attenuation in finite structures by means of locally resonant elastic and electroelastic metamaterials. Locally resonant metamaterials are characterized by bandgaps at wavelengths that are much larger than the lattice size, enabling low-frequency vibration/sound attenuation. Typically, bandgap analyses and predictions rely on the assumption of waves traveling in an infinite medium, and do not take advantage of modal representations commonly used for the analysis of the dynamic behavior of finite structures. We will present a novel argument for estimating the locally resonant bandgap in metamaterial-based finite structures (i.e. meta-structures with prescribed boundary conditions) using modal analysis, yielding a simple closed-form expression for the bandgap frequency and size. A method for understanding the importance of the resonator locations and mass distribution will be discussed in the context of a Riemann sum approximation of an integral. Numerical and experimental results will be presented regarding the effects of mass ratio, non-uniform spacing of resonators, and parameter variations among the resonators. Electromechanical counterpart of the problem will also be summarized for piezoelectric structures.