Structural periodic design is a modern and powerful strategy for lightweight structures achievements while remaining a convenient solution for manufacturing guidelines aspects. Including vibroacoustic design rules at early stage of product development is one of the main research targets. Periodic media just exhibit proper dynamic filtering effects that can be smartly used for vibroacoustic design. How periodic concepts can improve the broadband vibroacoustic signatures and performances is still an open question to be answered. Most of vibroacoustic treatments are frequency band limited. Indeed, on the one hand, viscoelastic materials (for instance) can be used for low frequency passive vibration control. On the other hand, poro-elastic blankets are efficient for high and mid frequency absorption of acoustic disturbance.
This Special Issue is just focused on these main themes also in connection with the VIPER MSCA Project which will finish in 2019 (Marie Curie grant agreement No 67544; http://viper.ec-lyon.fr).
It is agreed that the invited papers inside or outside this project will form a useful review of the state-of-the-art on the possibility to develop and to validate tools for the design of global vibroacoustic treatments based on periodic patterns allowing passive control of vibration and acoustic paths in layered concepts. Furthermore, they will depict a possible scenario of the next research topics to pursued in the near, middle and long terms.
It is expected to dealing with multi-scales aspect that needs specific numerical tools: the meso-scale is related to the elementary cell or the span, while the macro-scale relates to the full-size structure. Each scale will be characterized by its own efficiency indicators: effective parameters (mechanical and acoustical equivalent material properties, dispersion characteristics…) at the meso-scale, and vibroacoustic indicators (structural damping, acoustic absorption, transmission loss…) at the macro-scale.
Bridging the cell scale behavior and the vibroacoustic indicator still is a challenging issue that will significantly improve the macro-scale structural design.
The combination of different materials will be a major item too as well as new structural arrangements allowing maximization of energy dissipation while maintaining both structural stiffness and a reduced mass. Furthermore, viscoelastic, poro-elastic, auxetic materials are expected to play a strategic role in this kind of problems.
Contributions about uncertainties and/or the lack of perfect periodicity are expected too. This issue is quite important in view of the manufacturing aspects of engineering applications of periodic media and of robustness analysis involving periodicity-based concepts.