Metasurfaces—ultra-thin engineered sheets that manipulate waves—could soon harvest vibrations from machinery or footsteps to power wireless sensors and simultaneously dampen unwanted noise and movement. Today’s wireless sensor networks for the Internet of Things rely on batteries or wired power, which limits where they can be placed and how long they last. Existing energy harvesters and vibration isolators are separate devices, and most metasurface research has focused on light and electromagnetic waves, not mechanical vibrations. This project aims to design a single, self-tuneable metasurface that can both convert low-frequency vibrations into electricity and absorb those vibrations to protect structures. The metasurfaces will be 3D printed from multiple materials and shapes, allowing them to adapt to changing conditions like load or temperature. If successful, the work could enable self-powered sensors for industrial machinery, bridges, or buildings—monitoring structural health without batteries or wiring—while also reducing harmful vibrations in those same systems. At larger scales, the same design could serve as a noise-absorbing panel. The project is primarily applied engineering, but exploring how different materials respond to motion, sound, or gas adds a fundamental dimension that could open new sensing capabilities.
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The use of metasurfaces has gained increasing popularity across various applications, particularly in optics, acoustics and earthquake engineering, due to their special properties such as the meta-device thickness reduction (i.e., compared to 3D metamaterials) and intrinsic wave manipulating behaviour. In parallel, autonomous wireless sensor networks are rapidly evolving within the context of Industry 4.0, aiming to connect physical assets via the Internet of Things (IoT). Energy harvesting technology, capable of harnessing energy from ambient sources like solar, thermal, vibrations, and wind, provides a promising solution for powering these networks. Moreover, integrated vibration (or noise) isolation can simultaneously convert harmful vibrations into electrical energy for powering wireless sensors and enhance isolation efficiency in medium-to-large-scale systems. This dual functionality has prompted significant interest in developing nonlinear devices that can both harvest low-frequency energy and isolate vibrations. While this concept is theoretically sound, its practical implementation remains challenging, especially in designing a versatile system capable of either absorbing or amplifying vibrations (or noise) based on specific application needs. The presentation of metasurfaces for self-powered sensing (IoT) and vibration reduction is still limited in the available literature (they are mainly used for light and electromagnetic wave absorption and reflection). Hence, a key challenge is to design concepts of metasurfaces using an economical and environmentally friendly approach so that they can be effectively used within a wide range of operating conditions(dynamics) of the host system for self-powered sensing node development (as vibration or sound energy harvesters) at miniaturised scale (mm) and for noise and vibration absorption at a larger scale (tens of cm). Additionally, the exploration of different materials for stimulus detection, like motion, acoustic wave or gas, opens new avenues by introducing an additional "dimension" to the concept. In this project, we propose to design smart, self-tuneable metasurfaces (inspired by their unique characteristics on wave monitoring) that can amplify the received mechanical energy, in addition to their ability to respond to a broad range of external stimuli (e.g., load or heat). The metasurfaces will combine more than one material structure and shape that can absorb energy within a wide range of dynamic operating conditions (frequency and amplitude of external excitation). The developed self-tuneable metasurfaces will be 3D printed and will perform as vibration (or sound) energy harvesters when miniaturised, and as vibration isolation material when at larger sizes.
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