TITLE:
Towards Earthquake Shields: A Numerical Investigation of Earthquake Shielding with Seismic Crystals
AUTHORS:
Baris Baykant Alagoz, Serkan Alagoz
KEYWORDS:
Earthquake Shielding, Seismic Metamaterials, Seismic Wave Attenuation, Band Gap Analysis
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Acoustics,
Vol.1 No.3,
December
28,
2011
ABSTRACT: Authors numerically demonstrate that the seismic surface waves from an earthquake can be attenuated by a seismic crystal structure constructed on the ground. In the study, seismic crystals with a lattice constant of kilometer are investigated in the aspect of band gaps (Stop band), and some design considerations for earthquake shielding are discussed for various crystal configurations in a theoretical manner. Authors observed in their FDTD based 2D wave simulation results that the proposed earthquake shield can provide a decreasing in magnitude of surface seismic waves. Such attenuation of seismic waves might reduce the damage in an earthquake.