Design techniques for superposition of acoustic bandgaps using fractal geometries

Research into properties of heterogeneous artificial materials, consisting of arrangements of rigid scatterers embedded in a medium with different elastic properties, has been intense throughout last two decades. The capability to prevent the transmission of waves in predetermined bands of frequencies -called bandgaps- becomes one of the most interesting properties of these systems, and leads to the possibility of designing devices to control wave propagation. The underlying physical mechanism is destructive Bragg interference. Here we show a technique that enables the creation of a wide bandgap in these materials, based on fractal geometries. We have focused our work in the acoustic case where these materials are called Phononic/Sonic Crystals (SC) but, the technique could be applied any types of crystals and wave types in ranges of frequencies where the physics of the process is linear.