Energy dissipation and shock isolation using novel metamaterials

Dissipating kinetic energy from shock and vibration is an urgent requirement for various applications in aerospace to mechanical engineering. This paper proposes a series of innovative metamaterials with planar and cylindrical patterns for elastic energy dissipation and shock isolation. The planar unit cell with two axes of reflectional symmetry mainly consists of two V-shaped regions, four identical right triangle regions, and narrow regions. The stereometric and cylindrical unit cells are obtained through rotating and convolving methods. The mechanics of energy dissipation and shock isolation are systematically investigated with finite element analysis (FEA), and experiments. Results show that various mechanical responses of unit cells are obtained through tailoring combined geometric parameters and additional boundary conditions, and the planar unit cell has stronger bistability than the cylindrical one. Then, the designed multilayers metamaterials exhibit considerable energy dissipation via the snap-through induced hysteric force-displacement behaviors, whose performances are influenced by geometric parameters and the number of layers. Lastly, the designed metamaterials could effectively suppress the acceleration responses via the snap-through behaviors induced by elastic instability. The shock response process and corresponding deformation mechanics are investigated experimentally and numerically. The designed metamaterials have potential in shock and vibration engineering.