Designing a flexible material to protect buildings, military personnel

Phys.org  May 27, 2020
Cloaking materials are mature because the properties of acoustic (radar, sonar) and optical waves (infrared) are well-understood. However, cloaking for elastic waves in solid media is lagging. A team of researchers in the US (University of Missouri, MIT) has designed and fabricated a new class of cloaking materials which is composed of a functionally graded lattice embedded in an isotropic continuum background. The layers were 3-D printed and manually assembled. They experimentally and numerically investigated the characteristics of the proposed cloak and found very good cloaking performance under both tension and shear loadings. Potential applications for the materials include protecting structures against seismic waves, and suppressing vibrations on engines to reduce noise…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE

This structured lattice-type material protects against both types of energy waves — longitudinal and sheer — that can travel through the ground. Credit: University of Missouri

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