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Updated: Aug 11, 2025

Characterizing Dissipative Elastic Metamaterials Produced by Additive Manufacturing
Published on: June 28, 2024
Metamaterial foundation for seismic wave attenuation for low and wide frequency band
Arpan Gupta1, Rishabh Sharma2, Aman Thakur2
1Acoustics and Vibration Laboratory, School of Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, India. agupta@iitmandi.ac.in.
Abstract:
Metamaterials are periodic structures made by repeating a unit cell. Such a structure shows frequency-specific wave attenuation behaviour. In this work, a 2D metamaterial foundation is proposed for the seismic protection of buildings. The paramount challenge is to offer low frequency attenuation (~ 2-8 Hz), which is the dominant excitation during an earthquake. Based on the parametric study performed, a new type of metamaterial structure was proposed. It was found that the foundation consisting of repeating circular scatterers made of steel and plumbum embedded in rubber matrix can provide low and wide frequency wave attenuation from 2.6 to 7.8 Hz. The computational model of the structure was subjected to transient excitation against three pre-recorded earthquake excitations. The result showed that the novel foundation can resist the propagation of the seismic wave to the structure. Further, the response of a 2D building frame with metamaterial foundation was compared to a concrete foundation exposed to different earthquake excitations. The results are very promising as the frame vibration on the metamaterial foundation was significantly less than the same frame on the concrete foundation. The presented work opens the path to new research and development of seismic metamaterial foundation for earthquake attenuation.
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