Investigation of the negative-mass behaviors occurring below a cut-off frequency

Negative-mass phenomena occurring below a cut-off frequency are examined using both theoretical and experimental methods. The paper begins with an investigation of a mass-spring structure, the effective mass of which is shown to be negative below a specific frequency. Due to the decaying nature of lattice waves in the negative-mass system, the transmission drop induced by negative effective mass is demonstrated experimentally. Further investigation is conducted for a rectangular solid waveguide with clamped boundary conditions. It is shown that the lowest bandgap mode of the clamped waveguide can be attributed to negative effective mass below a cut-off frequency. Based on this observation, elastic metamaterials made of a steel grid filled with styrene butadiene rubber are designed and fabricated. Both the simulation and experimental analyses demonstrate that the designed metamaterials have negative effective mass below a cut-off frequency.