Embedded elastic wave mirrors for enhanced energy harvesting

The harvesting of elastic waves propagating in structures can be enhanced dramatically by means of focusing techniques through the use of mirror and lens concepts. Limited research has explored the elastic mirror design via cylindrical stubs that form elliptical and parabolic geometries to focus structure-borne waves originating from a point source and incident plane waves, respectively. Bulky cylindrical stubs used as scatterers in these first-generation heuristic efforts drastically altered the host structure although they achieved the focusing effect. To enable structurally-embedded elastic wave mirrors, a thorough understanding of the elastic mirror working principle is required. This work presents a detailed investigation of elastic wave mirror design, analysis, and fabrication for enhanced elastic wave energy harvesting. Specifically, it is aimed to provide an understanding of the elastic mirror mechanism (with an emphasis on the reflection of scatterers) for establishing embedded mirror concepts in which the host structure is not drastically altered. These configurations are enabled through the insertion of metallic beads (e.g. tungsten, lead, steel) into blind holes that form the mirror in the aluminum plate domain. Finite-element simulations and experimental validations are presented.

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