Helical Metamaterials

In the summer of 2021, I was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) to work with Professor Daraio in the Mechanics and Materials by Design Lab. In this project, I performed numerical simulations to characterize the dynamic properties of helical-type acoustic metamaterials. I found that inducing non-centrosymmetry in the structure allowed for more control over the degree of mode coupling at low frequencies and the size of the longitudinal bandgap. Through this research experience, I learned how to use the commercial finite element analysis software COMSOL Multiphysics to perform my numerical simulations and gained a lot of knowledge about mechanical metamaterials and wave propagation properties. I continued to work on this project into the 2021-2022 academic year with my graduate student mentor Gunho Kim to experimentally validate our numerical results. 

We compiled our findings into a research paper, which was accepted in the AIP journal Applied Physics Letters (APL) on July 1, 2022. The paper was selected to be a feature article and the cover for APL's August 15th, 2022 issue.