Sub-wavelength energy trapping of elastic waves in a metamaterial.

Deep sub-wavelength focusing has been demonstrated for locally resonant metamaterials using electromagnetic and acoustic waves. The elastic equivalents of such objects are made of sub-wavelength resonating beams fixed to a two-dimensional plate, as presented here. Independent of a random or regular arrangement of the resonators, the metamaterial shows large bandgaps that are independent of the incident wave direction. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the insertion of a defect in the layout, as a shorter resonator, creates strong amplification of the wave-field on the defect. This energy trapping, which is localized on a spatial scale that is much smaller than the wavelength in the two-dimensional plate, leads to a >1 factor in terms of the local density of energy.