Modeling and analysis of viscoelastic resonators for application to (quasi-)periodic metastructures

Abstract

Metamaterials and metastructures have several applications such as vibration, acoustic and vibroacoustic attenuation, acoustic absorption and insulation, vibration and shock mitigation, wave propagation control and focusing, among others. They are inspired on phononic crystals that exhibit bandgaps, that are frequency ranges where elastic or acoustic waves cannot propagate. However, bandgaps in metamaterials depend on the properties of the local resonances, that act as vibration absorbers, and not on the size of the periodic cell. This concept motivated the search for designed structures with locally resonant metamaterial-based finite structures, so-called metastructures, that could exhibit low-frequency bandgaps with relatively small structures. Numerous research groups have explored the feasibility of vibration absorbers in low-weight flexible structures, including the use of distributed low-size dynamic vibration absorbers. There is growing interest in the use of internal resonances to improve structural vibration control, while there is still room for substantial improvement in existing techniques and solutions, in particular on the inclusion of viscoelastic behavior for the local resonators. The main objective of this research proposal is to study modeling and analysis techniques well adapted for the viscoelastic behavior of the resonators and its effects on the performance in terms of vibration amplitude reduction in the primary system to which the resonators are attached.