Adaptive locally resonant metamaterials leveraging shape memory alloys

Locally resonant metamaterials leveraging shape memory alloy (SMA) springs are explored in this work in an effort to develop adaptive metamaterial configurations that can exhibit tunable bandgap properties as well as enhanced damping capabilities. An analytical model for a locally resonant metamaterial beam in transverse vibrations is combined with an SMA model for the resonator springs to investigate and leverage the potential of temperature-induced phase transformations and stress-induced hysteretic behavior of the springs. Two case studies are presented for this new class of smart metamaterials and the resulting finite metastructures. In one case, SMA resonators operate in the linear elastic regime, first at low temperature (martensitic behavior) and then at high temperature (austenitic behavior), demonstrating how the bandgap can be tuned to a different frequency range by altering the SMA elastic modulus with temperature. In the second case, the SMA springs are kept at high temperature at all times to operate in the nonlinear regime, so that the hysteresis associated with the SMA pseudoelastic effect is manifested, yielding additional dissipation over a range of frequencies, especially for the modes right outside the bandgap. Published by AIP Publishing.