Controlling elastic wave propagation in a soft bilayer system via wrinkling-induced stress patterns

Compression of a film/substrate bilayer system with different surface/interfacial structures can lead to diverse buckling patterns including sinusoidal wrinkles, ridges, folds, creases and tilted sawteeth wrinkles. In this paper, we show that elastic wave band gaps in the film/substrate bilayer system largely depend on the wrinkling patterns. More interestingly, we find that different wrinkling patterns investigated here can coexist and evolve in one bilayer system and the elastic wave propagation behaviors can be controlled by manipulating the hybrid wrinkling patterns. Our analysis also reveals that the periodic stress pattern plays a dominant role in tuning the bandgap structures in comparison to geometrical patterns caused by surface instability. A careful investigation of the transmission spectra of the composite systems has validated the main findings given by the analysis based on the Bloch wave theory. Potential use of the method and materials reported here to gain wide attenuation frequency ranges and the design of nesting Fibonacci superlattices have been demonstrated.