Development and practical application of locally resonant metamaterials for attenuation of noise and flexural vibration of floors in residential buildings

In this paper, a new locally resonant metamaterial (LRM) is proposed to attenuate noise and vibration of floors in residential buildings. The band gap behavior of LRMs has recently attracted attention in the field of noise and vibration absorption. However, no research has been reported in the literature on the practical application of LRMs in buildings and their generalization to civil engineering developments. The LRMs were designed and applied to a floor in an under-construction residential building to perform an in-depth investigation of vibro-acoustic control of the floor impact sound. Experiments were conducted to perform a multifaceted analysis of the band gap behavior of a host structure coupled with LRMs, as well as the effects of attaching different number of LRMs and mode response of the host structure. The experimental results indicated that the acceleration and sound pressure levels of the LRM-coupled structure was attenuated within the band gaps, and the band gap of the host structure that was coupled with LRMs widened to the upper and lower regions of the local resonance frequency.