Investigation of a new magnetorheological elastomer metamaterial plate with continuous programmable properties for vibration manipulation

Metamaterial plates have attracted considerable attention due to their unprecedented elastic wave manipulation abilities. Currently, the band gap and other properties of traditional metamaterial plates are fixed, and the material parameters of most metamaterials cannot be dynamically and continuously adjusted. To address this issue, a two-dimensional (2D) magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) programmable metamaterial plate (MREPMP) with local resonance was proposed. The proposed MREPMP was composed of a thin steel plate and a periodic array of resonators, consisting of MREs and electromagnetic mass blocks. It not only has a compact structural design, but also enables real-time vibration control and programming wave manipulation by altering the amplitude of the current. The dispersion relation of the proposed MREPMP was theoretically calculated based on the plane wave expansion (PWE) method and the simulated transmissibility was numerically calculated using the finite element method in COMSOL. Subsequently, a prototype of the MREPMP was fabricated, and vibration tests were conducted to assess its programmable vibration manipulation functionalities. Two different types of defect paths were used as excitations and the corresponding real-time vibration manipulation performance was analyzed. The simulation results agree with the experimental results, showing that the MREPMP can dynamically tune the band gap and activate different waveguides through continuous online programming. This paper opens up a new idea for tunable manipulation of wave propagation.