Theoretical and experimental analysis of bifurcation induced passive bandgap reconfiguration

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical analysis and experimental validation of passively reconfigurable bandgaps in a 1D chain of oscillators. Nonlinearities in the system result in a morphing of the bandgap structure when the excitation amplitude passes a certain threshold. Specifically, an asymmetric bistability is used to achieve amplitude dependent filtering through passive bandgap reconfiguration. The experimental system consists of a 1D chain of axially aligned pendulums arranged in dimer unit cells with nearest neighbor coupling. Repulsive magnets are used to induce bistability in the pendulums. Comparisons between experiments and theory show good agreement.