Practical implementation of a chiral phononic crystal demonstrator with ultra-low frequency bandgap

Abstract

The use of phononic crystals for vibration attenuation and isolation has been widely studied, showing that the attenuation frequency range depends on their mass and stiffness. The concepts of chirality and tacticity have been introduced into classical phononic crystals to enrich the dynamics of the mass elements and thereby achieve lower frequency ranges with high vibration attenuation. Although these concepts have demonstrated their effectiveness on lab-scale crystals, their implementation in industrial applications is still rare. Chiral phononic crystals require a complex geometry that complicates their manufacturing. Existing examples require to be fabricated by 3D printing, making them expensive to build on a large scale for demonstration purposes or in-situ applications. In this study, we redefine a chiral phononic crystal design for translational-rotational coupling in order to enable its manufacturability using exclusively conventional processes. We then investigate the design space of these newly designed phononic crystals, using a simplified unit cell FEM model that minimizes computation time. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the crystal's tunability by modifying the dimensions of the chiral links between the masses. A large crystal with ultra-low frequency range attenuation -- starting at 60~Hz -- is then designed, with the aim to demonstrate the influence of the crystal's tacticity on the vibration isolation by hand sensing. A crystal composed of 2 unit cells is manufactured and its measured transfer function is compared with numerical predictions, thus highlighting the disparities between the behavior of the structure under real-life and ideal excitation conditions.