Inverse design of reconfigurable piezoelectric topological phononic plates

Abstract: We present a methodology to perform inverse analysis on reconfigurable topological insulators for flexural waves in plate-like structures. First the unit cell topology of a phononic plate is designed, which offers two-fold degeneracy in the band structure by topology optimization. In the second step, piezoelectric patches bonded over the substrate plate are connected to an external circuit and used appropriately to break space inversion symmetry. The space inversion symmetry breaking opens a topological band gap by mimicking quantum valley Hall effect. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the topologically protected edge state exhibits wave propagation without backscattering and is immune to disorders. Predominantly, the proposed idea enables real-time reconfigurability of the topological interfaces in waveguide applications.