Experimental demonstration of topological waveguiding in elastic plates with local resonators

• Published in: New journal of physics Vol. 20; no. 11; pp. 113036 - 113047
• Main Authors: Chaunsali, Rajesh, Chen, Chun-Wei, Yang, Jinkyu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 23.11.2018
• Subjects: Acoustics; Bends; Bolts; Condensed matter physics; Cones; Design; Elastic plates; Energy harvesting; Lattices; locally resonant plate; mechanical metamaterials; Mechanical systems; Photonics; Physics; Resonant frequencies; Structural health monitoring; Topological insulators; topological waveguiding; Topology
• ISSN: 1367-2630; 1367-2630
• DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/aaeb61

The recent emergence of topological insulators in condensed matter physics has inspired analogous wave phenomena in mechanical systems. However, to date, the design of these mechanical systems has been limited mostly to discrete lattices or perforated structures. Here, we take a ubiquitous design of a bolted elastic plate and demonstrate that it can guide flexural waves crisply around sharp bends. We show that this continuum system eliminates unwanted in-plane plate modes and allows the manipulation of low-frequency flexural modes by exploiting the local resonance of the bolts. We report the existence of a pair of double Dirac cones near the resonant frequency of the bolts, one of which leads to the creation of a topological complete bandgap that forbids all the plate modes. These findings open new possibilities of managing multiple wave modes in elastic solids for applications in energy harvesting, impact mitigation, and structural health monitoring.