Passive low-frequency vibration mitigation in large space structures

The shift to higher orbits requires larger space structures that are assembled on-orbit. These large space structures experience problematic vibrations at low frequencies, especially during robotic assembly in space. Beyond active vibration control, which is expensive and often infeasible, current passive mitigation strategies are limited. Here, struts of the space frame are transformed to resonant metamaterials via periodically placed resonators along their length, providing a pathway for energy exhaustion. Simple and multi-degree of freedom resonators were successfully applied to struts to mitigate vibrations of frequencies <500 Hz. In frames, a dependence on resonator layout relative to the excitation point is demonstrated.