Despite the fact that nonlinearities are inherent in many natural and engineered systems, it is common for engineers to remove, or attempt to remove, all nonlinearity from their designs. Although this simplifies the performance analyses, it also overlooks a wide array of phenomena that could potentially enable fundamental breakthroughs.
The objective of this project is to derive fundamental insights for complex arrays of nonlinearly coupled oscillators, using structures defined as magneto-mechanical lattices. The magneto-mechanical lattices comprise periodic arrays of dynamically interacting magnets, which can be conceptualized as an array of equivalent springs and masses, or alternatively, as a solid composed of artificial macro-atoms. The nonlinear magnetic coupling is to be theoretically tailored to exploit nonlinear energy transfer behaviors, such as reconfiguring bandgaps, energy localization, internal resonances, etc. These nonlinear phenomena are to be experimentally demonstrated and measured by fabricated magneto-mechanical lattices.
