Energy Localization through Locally Resonant Materials

Among the attractive properties of metamaterials, the capability of focusing and localizing waves has recently attracted research interest to establish novel energy harvester configurations. In the same frame, in this work, we develop and optimize a system for concentrating mechanical energy carried by elastic anti-plane waves. The system, resembling a Fabry-Pérot interferometer, has two barriers composed of Locally Resonant Materials (LRMs) and separated by a homogeneous internal cavity. The attenuation properties of the LRMs allow for the localization of waves propagating at particular frequencies. With proper assumptions on the specific ternary LRMs, the separation of scales (between the considered wave lengths and the characteristic dimension of the employed unit cells) enables the use of a two-scale asymptotic technique for computing the effective behavior of the employed LRMs. This leads to a complete analytic description of the motion of the system. Here we report the results achieved by optimizing the geometry of the system for obtaining a maximum focusing of the incoming mechanical energy. The analytic results are then validated through numerical simulations.