Theoretical and experimental investigation of flexural wave propagation in straight beams with periodic structures: Application to a vibration isolation structure

A periodic binary straight beam with different cross sections is constructed and studied. The band structures of flexural waves in the structure are calculated with the plane-wave expansion method and the vibration attenuation spectra of a finite sample of it are calculated with the finite element method. Vibration experiment is performed in order to validate all the theoretical results, and the results match mainly. Finally, a vibration isolation structure is designed by using the feature of the flexural wave band gaps of the beam with periodic structure, which provides an attenuation of about 30 dB in the frequency range of the band gaps.