Simultaneous energy harvesting and vibration attenuation in piezo-embedded negative stiffness metamaterial

Mechanical metamaterials are uniquely engineered form of periodically arranged unit cells that exhibit interesting frequency-dependent physical properties like negative effective mass, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. These extreme engineering properties are beyond the natural properties of a material, which can modulate the propagation of wave. In this article, a mechanical realization of one of these uncommon properties called negative stiffness is emulated through analytical simulation. Wave propagation in metamaterials is contingent on frequency, which in turn results in transmission and attenuation bands. Simultaneous vibration control and energy harvesting can be executed by embedding energy harvesting smart material within the resonating units of the metamaterial. However, this needs careful design studies to outline the range of parameters. In this work, first, the band structure of a piezo-embedded negative stiffness metamaterial is studied using generalized Bloch’s theorem. Subsequently, harvested power along with the transmissibility is computed for a chain of finite number of metamaterial units by using backward substitution method. The results of the parametric studies elucidate that piezo-embedded negative stiffness metamaterial can enhance the performance in terms of vibration attenuation and harvested energy.