The band gaps of cubic phononic crystals with different shapes of scatterers

The phononic band structures of three-dimensional solid phononic crystals consisting of three types of lattices (face centred cubic, body centred cubic and simple cubic) with four different shapes (spherical, cubic, rhombic dodecahedral and truncated octahedral) of scatterers are studied numerically. The results show that reorienting of non-spherical scatterers can change the size of the band gap. For all kinds of shaped scatterers, the face centred cubic lattice is the optimal array structure. For each lattice the shape of scatterers that can generate the largest gaps is also presented.