Metasurface-guided flexural waves and their manipulations

Elastic metasurfaces, being the subject of much attention and discussion, are first designed by phase modulation and now are also considered as a kind of structures with subwavelength size, e.g., layer structures in 3D space or strip structures in 2D space. However, most of elastic metasurfaces, especially those with phase gradient subunits, cannot support elastic wave propagations along them. In this research, we construct non-resonant metasurfaces with an array of slots in plates and explore a unique form of flexural waves propagating along and decaying exponentially with the increasing of the distance from the metasurfaces, which are called metasurface-guided flexural waves. A theoretical framework is established to solve the dispersion relations of these waves by coupling high-order diffraction and waveguide modes. On the basis of this framework, we design three metasurfaces for rainbow reflection, mode conversion and topological interface state, which are realized and verified by finite element simulations and experiments. Our work provides a new idea for the manipulation of flexural waves in plates, which may have wide potential applications in vibration control, structural health monitoring and acoustic device design.