Reconfigurable Elastic Metamaterials: Engineering Dispersion with beyond Nearest Neighbors

Abstract

We design, simulate, and experimentally characterize a reconfigurable elastic metamaterial with beyond-nearest-neighbor (BNN) coupling. The structure is composed from the popular British model-construction system Meccano and supports backward waves with opposite directions of phase and group velocities. We experimentally verify three distinct configurations and acoustically infer their spatial vibration spectra.