Lightweight Vibration Absorption using Buckling Metamaterials

Introduction

Vibrations cause unwanted noise and even failure in many areas, including vehicles such as spacecraft, road vehicles, and trains, as well as sensitive optical or high-tech instruments and machinery. The market size for global vibration control systems was valued at 4.7 billion dollars in 2021 and is expected to expand to 8.1 billion dollars in 2030. This increase in demand is driven by a growing emphasis on the mechanical stability and balancing of industrial machines, which require ever-growing precision, and vehicles, which require ever-growing safety.

Strategies for Vibration Control

To counter these vibrations, many strategies have been developed. Some of the common approaches include:

1. Viscoelastic Materials: One of the easiest ways to mitigate vibrations. However, there is typically an inherent trade-off: high dissipation entails low stiffness, whereas many applications typically require both high dissipation and high specific stiffness.

2. Active Vibration Damping: This approach involves using systems that actively dampen vibrations. However, these systems typically add an additional layer of complexity and weight.

Proposed Solution

Here, we propose to use Euler buckling as a functional mechanism to create vibration absorbers. Buckling structures are simultaneously stiff and highly dissipative due to their high stiffness prior to buckling and highly nonlinear force and damping response during post-buckling.

Implementation

To this end, we will use flexible mechanical metamaterials made of metal and fibre-reinforced composites with tailored buckling and post-buckling characteristics. We will establish such metamaterials as a prime avenue to create lightweight structures that are orders of magnitude more dissipative than their linear viscoelastic counterparts.

Potential Impact

We will hence establish their potential as a competitive solution for lightweight structures combining high damping and high specific stiffness in high-tech and aerospace applications. In particular, our metamaterials will allow for the reduction of weight and increase the damping of energy-absorbing components in vehicles, thereby reducing their overall weight.