Soft Phononic Crystal with Tunable Bandgap Through Pneumatic Actuation

Abstract

Pneumatic manipulation has the advantages of low cost, lightweight design, fast response, and ease of integration. However, its application in the field of phononic crystals remains limited. Inspired by pneumatic soft robots, this article proposes a pneumatic soft phononic crystal arranged in a square lattice, incorporating four pneumatic actuators within the scatterer. By manipulating air pressure, the bandgap can be effectively opened and closed. The finite element analysis is employed to examine the deformation and bandgaps of the pneumatic soft phononic crystal under varying air pressures. Moreover, the effect of the scatterer's rotation angle on the bandgap evolution in the phononic crystal is parametrically investigated. The results show that varying both the volume and the rotation angle of the scatterer can achieve bandgap opening, closing, and tuning. The proposed phononic crystal presents obvious practical applications and provides important insights for the design of soft-tunable acoustic devices.