Cantilever Beam Metastructure for Active Broadband Vibration Suppression

This paper presents a beam structure of a new metamaterial-inspired dynamic vibration attenuation system. The proposed experimental research presents a designed cantilevered zigzag structure that can have natural frequencies orders of magnitude lower than a simple cantilever of the same scale. The proposed vibration attenuation system relies on the masses places on the zigzag structure thus changing the dynamic response of the system. The zigzag plates are integrated into the host structure namely a cantilever beam with openings, forming what is referred to here as a metastructure. Experimental frequency response function results are shown comparing the response of the structure to depending on the natural frequency of the zigzag structures. Results show that the distributed inserts in the system can split the peak response of the structure into two separate peaks rendering the peak frequency a low transmission frequency. These preliminary results provide a view of the potential of research work on active-controlled structures and nonlinear insert-structure interaction for vibration attenuation.