A review on the research progress of mechanical meta-structures and their applications in rail transit

Due to the lightweight feature and excellent performances on vibration and noise control, novel mechanical meta-structures are exhibiting increasingly extensive application prospects in engineering. The structures also have great potentials to meet the development requirements of high safety, light weight and low noise in the field of rail transit. Mechanical meta-structures include acoustic black holes, phononic crystals and mechanical/acoustic metamaterials, with which special mechanical properties that are not available to traditional structures can be achieved through innovative design of the structural units. In this paper, the fundamental properties and research progress of these meta-structures are described and the prospects in rail transit field are explored based on their applications on vibration control and noise reduction. It is hoped that this paper can provide some useful references for relevant researchers and engineers.