The mechanical and acoustic properties of two-dimensional pentamode metamaterials with different structural parameters

The effective mechanical and acoustic properties of two-dimensional pentamode metamaterials (PMs) with different structural parameters are investigated in this paper. It is found that with varying structural parameters, the effective bulk modulus and density remain constant as the same as those of water, while the figure of merit, i.e., the ratio of the bulk modulus to the shear modulus (B/G) gradually increases due to the decrease of the shear modulus. However, full wave simulations reveal that with the increase of B/G, the acoustic scattering becomes more and more intense, which indicates that the acoustic properties of pentamode metamaterials gradually deviate from those of water. These anomalous acoustic behaviors are proposed to arise from the existence of the bending modes in pentamode microstructures. Our results show that for pentamode metamaterials, the mechanical properties cannot be simply translated to their acoustic properties, and the structural parameters affect the mechanical and acoustic properties in much different ways.