Unraveling and exploiting disorder in the design and realization of metamaterial solutions for broadband noise and vibration reduction

 From the strong need of reconciling the often conflicting and ever tightening ecologic requirements and noise and vibration exposure regulations, a vast amount of research emerged in innovative lightweight solutions with favorable vibro-acoustic properties. Among these, locally resonant metamaterials were recently shown to enable strongly improved noise and vibration reduction in targeted frequency ranges, called stop bands.
While their potential has been demonstrated, one of the main reasons hindering the breakthrough of metamaterials as a widely applicable engineering solution is their current lack of highly desired broadband performance. Whereas current metamaterial design is typically based on perfectly ordered, often periodic arrangements of resonators on or in a regular host structure, intentionally introducing disorder in locally resonant metamaterials was recently discovered to hold the promising potential of broadening the frequency range of enhanced vibro-acoustic performance.
By including disorder in the modeling, analysis and design of locally resonant metamaterials, this project aims to assess and unravel the impact of disorder on their vibro-acoustic performance, to reveal beneficial disorder effects and their governing parameters and to leverage upon the acquired fundamental insights in order to develop and realize metamaterials for broadband noise and vibration reduction by exploiting disorder.