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Despite significant advances in the field of phononic crystals, the development of acoustic metafluids that replicate the behaviour of liquids in three dimensions remains elusive. For instance, water - the quintessential pentamode (PM) material - has a bulk modulus two orders of magnitude higher than current state-of-the-art PMs. The need for a low shear modulus inherently conflicts with the desire of high bulk modulus and density. In this letter, we shed light on the limitations of existing PM geometries and propose an innovative shape for the links that constitute the network. Inspired by the kinematics of ropes, these links are constructed from thin fibres and demonstrate the potential to create PMs with properties akin to those of liquids. As a prime example, we present the design of the first metamaterial that fully deserves the name 3D metal water, since its acoustic properties in the low frequency regime are indistinguishable with water. Additionally, we highlight a shear band gap in the lattice dispersion diagram, and illustrate the influence of geometric parameters on the dynamic properties at higher frequencies. This novel design of metafluids holds promise for applications requiring anisotropic materials such as acoustic lenses, waveguides, and cloaks., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures

In this paper we report the numerical design and experimental validation of a pentamode cloak for scattering reduction of elliptical targets in underwater acoustics. Despite being a well-known theoretical concept, experimental validations of transformation-based acoustic cloaking for non-axisymmetric targets have been hindered due to the difficulties related to the complexity of the required material distribution. We overcome these by adopting a linear quasi-symmetric map defined in elliptic coordinates that allows for the design of a pentamode cloak with constant anisotropic elasticity and a scalar inhomogeneous density. We then perform the long-wavelength homogenization based optimization of unit cells that implement the computed material distribution. Numerical validations allow to assess the working range of the designed microstructure, which depends solely on the ratio between the wavelength and the size of the microstructure, and is thus expressed in terms of the maximum normalized wavenumber \kappa L_c, being L_c the characteristic length of the considered unit cell. The influence on the scattering performance of the cloak of a pentamode bandgap common to all the cells in the microstructure is also discussed, finding that it is actually detrimental for the scattering reduction. Finally, the specimen is fabricated and experimentally tested over the range 0.45<\kappa L_c<1.34.

Cloaks for underwater applications designed for actual submarine acoustic stealth are still far from the technological advancement needed for being put in practice. Several challenges are to be overcame such as dealing with weight or non-axisymmetric shapes. In this paper, we introduce the use of elliptical coordinates to define quasi-symmetric transformations to retrieve the material properties of pentamode cloaks for elliptical shaped targets, along with a quantifiable approximation introduced by the rotation tensor being different from the identity. This is done analitically adopting transformation theory, in an attempt to generalize the usual approach for axisymmetric cloaks, with the aim of dealing with shapes closer to those of the actual cross section of a submarine. With respect to existing techniques for dealing with arbitrarily shaped pentamode cloaks, the introduced technique allows for a priori control on the principal directions of anisotropy and for enlarged design space in terms of possible combinations of material property distributions for the same geometry of the problem.

We experimentally demonstrate temporal pumping of elastic waves in an electromechanical waveguide. An aluminum beam covered by an array of piezoelectric patches connected to shunt circuits with controllable resistances enables the spatial and temporal control of the beam's stiffness. The spatial modulation produces non-trivial edge states, while a smooth temporal variation of the modulation phase drives the transfer of edge states from one boundary of the waveguide to the other in a controllable manner. This characteristic behavior for a topological pump is here demonstrated for the first time in a continuous elastic waveguide. The framework presented herein opens new avenues for the manipulation and transport of information through elastic waves, with potential technological applications for digital delay lines and digitally controlled waveguides. Our study also explores higher dimensional topological physics using time as a synthetic dimension in electromechanical systems.

In this work we experimentally achieve 1 kHz-wide directional band-gaps for elastic waves spanning a frequency range from approximately 8 to 11 kHz. One-way propagation is induced by way of a periodic waveguide consisting in an aluminum beam partially covered by a tightly packed array of piezoelectric patches. The latter are connected to shunt circuits and switches which allow for a periodic modulation in time of the cell properties. A traveling stiffness profile is obtained by opportunely phasing the temporal modulation of each active element, mimicking the propagation of a plane wave along the material, therefore establishing unidirectional wave propagation at bandgap frequencies.

We investigate non-reciprocal wave propagation in spatiotemporal phononic plates. In particular, the first goal of this manuscript is to present a general formulation of the Plane Wave Expansion Method (PWEM) that, in contrast with previous works, is applicable to any class of 2D spatiotemporal unit cells whose properties can be expanded in traveling plane waves. The second goal is to exploit this analysis tool in order to study a new class of materials capable of violating mirror symmetry in momentum space, therefore breaking reciprocity principle along different wave propagation directions. This is obtained by considering the plate elastic properties to be discretely modulated in space and continuously in time. Theoretical dispersion profiles are validated and compared with numerical simulations.