Design and Analysis of Tunable Phononic Structures

Abstract

Within the broad field of metamaterials research, a great deal of attention has been paid to photonic and phononic structures, which manipulate the propagation of electromagnetic and acoustic waves, respectively, for interesting applications. Recently, it has been shown that phononic crystals fabricated from an elastomeric material can have their wave transmission behavior tuned by external loading. However, little research has yet been directed to the design and analysis of such tunable structures with quasiperiodic or disordered geometries. This work aims to first investigate the signal transmission behavior of such phononic structures for various frequencies and then to examine the new transmission behavior resulting from external loading. This research into phononic structures has applications in stress sensors and waveguides and, with the investigation of disordered structures, may lead to more versatile geometries for these applications than what phononic crystals provide.