Band Gaps and Vibration Isolation of a Three-dimensional Metamaterial with a Star Structure

Elastic metamaterials have promising applications in wave control and vibration isolation, due to their extraordinary characteristics, e.g., negative Poisson ratio, band gaps, effective negative mass density and effective negative modulus. How to develop new functional metamaterials using a special structure has always been a hot topic in this field. In this study, a three-dimensional (3D) star structure is designed to construct metamaterials with both negative static and dynamic properties. The results show that the 3D star structure formed a wide band gap at lower frequency and had a negative Poisson’s ratio. Different from conventional acoustic metamaterials, the main physical mechanism behind the low-frequency band gap of the 3D star structure is the resonance mode formed by the bending deformation of each rib plate, which made it easier to achieve effective isolation of low-frequency elastic waves with a low mass density. In addition, many structural parameters of the 3D star structure can be modulated to effectively adjust the band gap frequency by changing the angle between the concave nodes and aspect ratio. This study provides a new way to design the 3D acoustic metamaterials and develop the lightweight vibration isolation devices.