Elastic waves exhibit rich polarization characteristics absent in acoustic and electromagnetic waves. By designing a solid elastic metamaterial based on three-dimensional anisotropic locally resonant units, here we experimentally demonstrate polarization bandgaps together with exotic properties such as ‘fluid-like' elasticity. We construct elastic rods with unusual vibrational properties, which we denote as ‘meta-rods'. By measuring the vibrational responses under flexural, longitudinal and torsional excitations, we find that each vibration mode can be selectively suppressed. In particular, we observe in a finite frequency regime that all flexural vibrations are forbidden, whereas longitudinal vibration is allowed—a unique property of fluids. In another case, the torsional vibration can be suppressed significantly. The experimental results are well interpreted by band structure analysis, as well as effective media with indefinite mass density and negative moment of inertia. Our work opens an approach to efficiently separate and control elastic waves of different polarizations in fully solid structures.

We derive and numerically demonstrate that perfect absorption of elastic waves can be achieved in two types of ultra-thin elastic meta-films: one requires a large value of almost pure imaginary effective mass density and a free space boundary, while the other requires a small value of almost pure imaginary effective modulus and a hard wall boundary. When the pure imaginary density or modulus exhibits certain frequency dispersions, the perfect absorption effect becomes broadband, even in the low frequency regime. Through a model analysis, we find that such almost pure imaginary effective mass density with required dispersion for perfect absorption can be achieved by elastic metamaterials with large damping. Our work provides a feasible approach to realize broadband perfect absorption of elastic waves in ultra-thin films.

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