Acoustic emission method is a nondestructive evaluation method based on the propagation of elastic waves due to the sudden change in strain field caused by newly formed fracture surfaces. While the method has been successfully applied to many structures, the influence of friction emissions limits the diverse use of the method in large-scale structures. This research integrates the metamaterial geometry to block low frequency friction signals while allowing high frequency signals due to the crack growth. The phononic structure is composed of periodic arrangement of holes in a steel plate that prohibits propagation of elastic waves near the band gap of 60 kHz. The dispersion curve of the periodic structure is calculated using finite element modeling of a unit cell in COMSOL Multiphysics. As the band gap of the periodic structure is highly narrowband, the acoustic sensing is achieved by highly narrowband capacitive type Micro-Electro- Mechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors tuned to the desired stop band frequency. The integration of periodic plate design and MEMS sensors provides wave-field focusing to reduce wave attenuation, and prevent interference of secondary waves sources, such as friction, with the primary waveforms. The waveguiding feature of the designed structure is experimentally investigated and discussed in this paper.
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