Researchers explore loosely overdamped system with extreme low stiffness for nanoparticle sorting with nanometer precision.

A hybrid acoustic metamaterial is proposed as a new class of sound absorber, which exhibits superior broadband low-frequency sound absorption as well as excellent mechanical stiffness/strength. Based on the honeycomb-corrugation hybrid core (H-C hybrid core), we introduce perforations on both top facesheet and corrugation, forming perforated honeycomb-corrugation hybrid (PHCH) to gain super broadband low-frequency sound absorption. Applying the theory of micro-perforated panel (MPP), we establish a theoretical method to calculate the sound absorption coefficient of this new kind of metamaterial. Perfect sound absorption is found at just a few hundreds hertz with two-octave 0.5 absorption bandwidth. To verify this model, a finite element model is developed to calculate the absorption coefficient and analyze the viscous-thermal energy dissipation. It is found that viscous energy dissipation at perforation regions dominates the total energy consumed. This new kind of acoustic metamaterials show promising engineering applications, which can serve as multiple functional materials with extraordinary low-frequency sound absorption, excellent stiffness/strength and impact energy absorption.

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Particle damping is a technique of providing damping with granular particles embedded within small holes in a vibrating structure. The particles absorb kinetic energy through particle-to-wall and particle-to-particle frictional collisions. While the concept of particle damping seems to be simple and it has been used successfully in many fields for vibration reduction, it is difficult to predict the damping characteristics due to complex collisions in the dense particle flow. In this paper, we utilize the 3D discrete element method (DEM) for computer simulation and characterization of particle damping. With the DEM modeling tool validated with experimental results, it is shown that the particle damping can achieve a very high value of specific damping capacity. Furthermore, simulations provide information of particle motions within the container hole during three different regions and help explain their associated damping characteristics. The particle damping is a combination of the impact and the friction damping. The damping is found to be highly nonlinear as the rate of energy dissipation depends on amplitude. Particularly, the damping effect results in a linear decay in amplitude over a finite period of time. These characteristics are examined with respect to a simple single-mass impact damper and a dry-friction damper. It is concluded that the particle damping is a mix of these two damping mechanisms. It is further shown that the relative significance of these damping mechanisms depends on a particular arrangement of the damper. This study represents an effort towards a deeper understanding of particle damping to provide a comprehensive methodology for its analysis and design.

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Metasurfaces have an extraordinary wavefront manipulation capability to generate various functionalities with ultrathin planar structures and provide an unprecedented means of easily achieving invisibility carpet cloaks in practice. However, due to the limitation of the fabrication method, great challenges exist in the implementation of curved or spherical metasurface‐based cloaks with good performance. Here, a novel fabrication method that combines 3D printing via stereolithography and injection molding of liquid metal is proposed, and an arched metasurface carpet cloak operating in the microwave domain is realized successfully as a demonstration. Experiments show that the proposed ultrathin and polarization‐independent cloak has good stealth performance in terms of bandwidth and angular span. Notably, the fabrication method is also suitable for obtaining other metasurfaces and metamaterials with arbitrary shapes, which may greatly promote the practical application of artificial electromagnetic structures.

This paper describes an experimental investigation of a particle damping method for a beam and a plate. Tungsten carbide particles are embedded within longitudinal (and latitudinal) holes drilled in the structure, as a simple and passive means for vibration suppression. Unlike in traditional damping materials, mechanisms of energy dissipation of particle damping are highly nonlinear and primarily related to friction and impact phenomena. Experiments are conducted with a number of arrangements of the packed particles including different particle sizes and volumetric packing ratios. The results show that the particle damping is remarkably effective and that strong attenuations are achieved within a broad frequency range. The effects of the system parameters including particle size, packing ratio and particle material are studied by broadband and narrowband random excitations. The experimental results confirm a numerical prediction that shear friction in the longitudinal (and the latitudinal) directions is effective as the major contributing mechanism of damping in the case. Another unique feature of linear decay in free vibrations is also observed in this case of particle damping.

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