Periodic pile-soil system as a barrier for seismic surface waves

Abstract

This paper investigates the bandgap properties of two-dimensional elastic problem with pile barrier for seismic surface waves. The main objective of this proposed work is to investigate the propagation of surface waves through periodically arranged piles in a single soil medium and to study the feasibility of surface waves attenuation by finite element technique. We consider the idea of seismic metamaterials in this study. One class of seismic metamaterials is explored with a periodic arrangement of vertical pile inclusions inside of the ground. The unit-cell analysis of the pile-soil system has been discussed in this work to attain the bandgaps with the low-frequency range. We varied all geometrical and mechanical parameters with shape of the pile to display the productivity of the weakening zone. These low-frequency ranges bandgaps suggest that the planned pile-soil system is efficient in reducing surface waves. The possibility study exposes that this type of pile-soil system can be applied as seismic barricades for mitigating seismic waves to guard critical civil structures from earthquake dangers. This comes as an interesting approach to potentially shield the LIGO detectors in the low-frequency range and can have an impact on the sensitivity of existing and future ground-based detectors. The present result will open a new prospect for the wave barricades designed with a low cost of money.