ERI: Exploiting Dynamic Origami for Reconfigurable and Versatile Control of Acoustic Waves

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This Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) grant will fund research that enables increased flexibility in the control of sound propagating through civil infrastructure, mechanical machinery, and aerospace systems, including for applications in acoustic imaging, defect detection, and noise control, thereby promoting the progress of science and advancing the national prosperity and welfare. Acoustic metasurfaces are two-dimensional thin artificial materials that are empowered with extraordinary control over the scattering of sound waves. Until recently, such metasurfaces had fixed configurations that were difficult to tune in real time, thereby limiting their potential use and performance. A recent focus on tunable, reconfigurable, and programmable acoustic metasurfaces promises efficient and smart control of sound waves, but existing solutions suffer from sophisticated tuning mechanisms, use of active elements, and poor efficiency. This project will overcome these limitations by demonstrating new and simple mechanisms for reconfigurable acoustic wave control using flexible structures designed by origami principles, whose folded geometry may be modulated in real time. Although origami principles have been widely used in robotics, soft materials, and flexible electronics, the relationship between dynamic origami and acoustic wave control has been largely unexplored. The knowledge and tools generated by this research will enable the next generation of reconfigurable wave-based devices that are adaptive to changing environments and performance objectives. Activities aiming to engage new generations of students in STEM education and research include outreach programs to K-12 students and extensive planned participation of undergraduate students in team-based technical research projects.This research aims to make fundamental contributions to a practical understanding of how the shape, periodicity, and size of origami structures change dynamically as they undergo deformation and the concomitant impact on acoustic wave propagation. It will achieve this outcome by building a theoretical and computational framework for characterizing and predicting acoustic wave interactions with dynamic origami structures, by developing design strategies that enable application-specific synthesis of dynamic origami structures with target functionalities, and by investigating different tuning mechanisms. Experimental validation and testing will be performed on prototype reconfigurable acoustic metasurfaces that leverage principles of origami highlighted by the theoretical analysis. Such experimental realization will be used to demonstrate wave steering and wave focusing functionalities typical of sensing, communication, imaging, and energy harvesting applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.