A brief review of metamaterials for opening low-frequency band gaps

Metamaterials are an emerging type of man-made material capable of obtaining some extraordinary properties that cannot be realized by naturally occurring materials. Due to tremendous application foregrounds in wave manipulations, metamaterials have gained more and more attraction. Especially, developing research interest of low-frequency vibration attenuation using metamaterials has emerged in the past decades. To better understand the fundamental principle of opening low-frequency (below 100 Hz) band gaps, a general view on the existing literature related to low-frequency band gaps is presented. In this review, some methods for fulfilling low-frequency band gaps are firstly categorized and detailed, and then several strategies for tuning the low-frequency band gaps are summarized. Finally, the potential applications of this type of metamaterial are briefly listed. This review is expected to provide some inspirations for realizing and tuning the low-frequency band gaps by means of summarizing the related literature.