The influence of structure geometry and material on seismic metamaterial performance

TL;DR

This paper explores how the geometry and material composition of seismic metamaterials influence their ability to control elastic waves, aiming to optimize design for seismic hazard mitigation and urban noise reduction.

Contribution

It investigates the effects of structure geometry and material choice on seismic metamaterial performance, highlighting practical design considerations for large-scale implementation.

Findings

Square inclusions outperform circular ones at the same filling fraction.

Steel columns create large bandgaps but are impractical due to size and cost.

Concrete columns with soft soil coatings can also produce effective bandgaps.

Abstract

Diverting, and controlling, elastic vibrations impacting upon infrastructure is a major challenge for seismic hazard mitigation, and for the reduction of machine noise and vehicle vibration in the urban environment. Seismic metamaterials (SMs), with their inherent ability to manipulate wave propagation, provide a key route for overcoming the technological hurdles involved in this challenge. Engineering the structure of the SM serves as a basis to tune and enhance its functionality, and inspired by split rings, swiss-rolls, notch-shaped and labyrinthine designs of elementary cells in electromagnetic and mechanical metamaterials, we investigate altering the structure geometries of SMs with the aim of creating large bandgaps \textcolor{black}{in a subwavelength regime}. We show that square stiff inclusions, perform better in comparison to circular ones, whilst keeping the same filling fraction. En route to enhancing the bandgap, we have also studied the performance of SMs with different constituent materials; we find that steel columns, as inclusions, show large bandgaps, however, the columns are too large for steel to be a feasible material in practical or financial terms. Non-reinforced concrete would be preferable for industry level scaling up of the technology because, concrete is cost-effective, easy to cast directly at the construction site and easy to provide arbitrary geometry of the structure. As a part of this study, we show that concrete columns can also be designed to exhibit bandgaps if we cast them within a soft soil coating surrounding the protected area for various civil structures like a bridge, building, oil pipelines etc.