Hierarchical large-scale elastic metamaterials for passive seismic wave mitigation

Large scale elastic metamaterials have recently attracted increasing interest in the scientific community for their potential as passive isolation structures for seismic waves. In particular, so-called “seismic shields” have been proposed for the protection of large areas where other isolation strategies (e.g. dampers) are not workable solutions. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of an innovative design based on hierarchical design of the unit cell, i.e. a structure with a self-similar geometry repeated at different scales. Results show how the introduction of hierarchy allows the conception of unit cells exhibiting reduced size with respect to the wavelength while maintaining the same or improved isolation efficiency at frequencies of interest for earthquake engineering. This allows to move closer to the practical realization of such seismic shields, where low-frequency operation and acceptable size are both essential characteristics for feasibility.