Flexnertia: A novel dissipation mechanism for structural vibration reduction through coupling of flexural motion with an inerter

This paper presents a novel Flexnertia metastructure concept to perform vibration suppression through coupling rotational inertia to structural flexural motion. Theoretical analysis and experimental test of the proposed metastructure with emphasis on dissipating structural flexural motion is exhibited, showing vibration control performance. The experimental and numerical results are in good agreement, both confirming that the average overall response of the metastructure is significantly reduced. The attenuation becomes most pronounced in the low-frequency range where structures tend to suffer most due to high response around the regime of the first flexural modes.