We are delighted that Dr FAN Haiyan, a PhD graduate from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has received the competitive PolyU PhD Thesis Award for Merit.
The PolyU Graduate School establishes the PhD Thesis Award to recognize, reward and promote the distinguished research achievements by graduating PhD students. There are two award classes, namely Outstanding and Merit, recognizing students’ performance of different levels. In 2024, there were only two awardees across the entire university.
Dr Fan completed her PhD under the supervision of Prof. SU Zhongqing and has demonstrated exceptional research achievements through her graduating thesis.
Thesis Title: Non-Hermitian Topological Phases in Elastic and Acoustic Lattices
- For contribution to precise sound control and defend against intrusion by small underwater targets
Chief Supervisor: Prof. SU Zhongqing
Natural materials usually have inherent acoustic characteristics that are difficult to meet the special needs in precise sound control. In this thesis, the proposed metamaterials show unprecedented abilities to engineer the characteristics of sound including but not limited to amplitude, phase, frequency and mode shape, thereby improving sound detection resolution and enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio. This thesis starts with one-dimensional (1D) metamaterials with additional loss treatments to produce a gathering effect of the weak acoustic signals, which amplifies the signals by 9 times. Then, we extend to a two-dimensional (2D) space, achieving high directivity anti-interference sound wave beam based on the valley Hall effect, solving the problem that target acoustic signal propagation is susceptible to interference. Last but not least, a three-dimensional (3D) metamaterial with fluid-solid interaction coming into play which improves the identification ability of underwater small target acoustic signals. These works offer potential applications in acoustic detection and identification of underwater small targets.
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