Seismic Crystals And Earthquake Shield Application

TL;DR

This paper proposes a theoretical design for seismic crystals as earthquake shields that can significantly damp surface waves, potentially reducing earthquake damage by about 0.5 magnitude units.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of seismic crystals with band gaps for earthquake shielding and demonstrates their effectiveness through FDTD simulations.

Findings

Seismic crystals can create band gaps to block surface waves.

Simulations show about 0.5 magnitude reduction in surface wave magnitude.

Earthquake shields based on seismic crystals could reduce destruction.

Abstract

We theoretically demonstrate that earthquake shield made of seismic crystal can damp down surface waves, which are the most destructive type for constructions. In the paper, seismic crystal is introduced in aspect of band gaps (Stop band) and some design concepts for earthquake and tsunami shielding were discussed in theoretical manner. We observed in our FDTD based 2D elastic wave simulations that proposed earthquake shield could provide about 0.5 reductions in magnitude of surface wave on the Richter scale. This reduction rate in magnitude can considerably reduce destructions in the case of earthquake.