Experimental Observation of a Large Low-Frequency Band Gap in a Polymer Waveguide

The quest for large and low-frequency band gaps is one of the principal objectives pursued in a number of engineering applications, ranging from noise absorption to vibration control, and to seismic wave abatement. For this purpose, a plethora of complex architectures (including multiphase materials) and multiphysics approaches have been proposed in the past, often involving difficulties in their practical realization. To address the issue of proposing a material design that enables large band gaps using a simple configuration, in this study we propose an easy-to-manufacture design able to open large, low-frequency complete Lamb band gaps exploiting a suitable arrangement of masses and stif…