Widening the Band Gaps of Hourglass Lattice Truss Core Sandwich Structures for Broadband Vibration Suppression

Abstract This paper proposes a novel phononic crystal sandwich beam (PCSB) for low-frequency and broadband vibration suppression. The representative volume element (RVE) consists of two hourglass truss unit cells with the same span but different rod radii. After validating the modeling method, a model of the PCSB is established to calculate band structure and transmittance response, and the results show good agreement. It is found that the PCSB can open wider and lower band gaps compared to a traditional sandwich beam (TSB). The band-folding mechanism is applied. The PCSB breaks the spatial symmetry, becomes diatomic, and opens the folding points, finally leading to two band-folding-induced gaps. The experiment is conducted on the PCSB, and the vibration band gap property is confirmed. Subsequently, the impacts of geometric parameters on the PCSB’s band gaps are investigated in detail. Design guidelines for tuning the geometric parameters toward lower frequency and broadband band gap are provided based on the parametric study results. In addition, the higher-order band-folding strategy is proposed. It is shown that a multi-folding PCSB can produce more band gaps. However, through two examples, i.e., second-folding and third-folding PCSBs, it is known that simply increasing the folding order may not be effective and even could deteriorate the vibration attenuation ability. In summary, this work explores a general strategy for designing sandwich beams with low-frequency and broadband vibration suppression ability.