Band gap structures for viscoelastic phononic crystals based on numerical and experimental investigation

Many materials used as phononic crystals (PCs) are viscoelastic one. It is believed that viscosity results in damping to attenuate wave propagation, which may help to tune the defect modes or band gaps of viscoelastic phononic crystals. To investigate above phenomenon, firstly, we have extended the application of boundary element method (BEM) to the study of viscoelastic phononic crystals with and without a point defect. A new developed BEM within the framework of Bloch theory can easily deal with viscoelastic phononic crystals with arbitrary shapes of the scatterers. Experimental methods have been put forward based on the self-made viscoelastic phononic crystals. Verified by the experimental results, systematic comprehensive parametric studies on the band structure of viscoelastic phononic crystals with varying factors (final–initial value ratio, relaxation time, volume fraction of scatterers, shapes of scatterers) have been discussed by the numerical simulation. To further address the possibility to change the defect modes, the band structure of viscoelastic phononic crystals with a point defect has been studied based on the numerical and experimental methods. From present research work, it can be found that by adjusting the two viscous parameters combined with considering the effect of volume fraction and shapes, a wider and lower initial forbidden frequency or lower and higher quality factor resonant frequency can be obtained.