A novel buried periodic in-filled pipe barrier for Rayleigh wave attenuation: Numerical simulation, experiment and applications

Abstract

Surface wave is a major concern in ambient vibration mitigation. To this end, a novel shallow buried periodic in-filled pipe barrier is proposed. Complex dispersion analysis is conduced to evaluate the decay of surface waves and the influence of material damping. Through a combination of numerical simulations and lab-scale experiments, the effectiveness and robustness of surface wave attenuation are verified. Result shows that the proposed periodic in-filled barrier exhibits excellent performance in low-frequency surface wave attenuation. Both the energy dissipation induced by material damping and local resonance of in-filled pipes contribute to surface wave attenuation. The influence of viscosity also enhances wave attenuation and it should be taken into full account in practice. In addition, these novel wave barriers are suitable for passive isolation as well as active isolation. To further widen the attenuation zones, the gradient layouts of in-filled pipes could be a good alternative considering the limited barrier width. Besides, the feasibility of periodic in-filled barriers to train-induced vibration mitigation is preliminary verified by analyzing the measured acceleration record in the time-domain. Thanks to the subwavelength size and shallow depth, these novel wave barriers are convenient for construction and cost-effective, thus showing great potential in ambient vibration mitigation.