Design for Extremes: Metamaterials for Vibration Control of Civil Infrastructure

The protection of civil infrastructure for extreme events is a critical challenge for civil engineers. Damaging vibrations caused by nearby rail systems, urban construction, adaptive reuse of buildings into recreational facilities, mechanical appliances, and related, during normal operations can affect the occupants. During extreme events, vibrations caused by strong winds or unexpected earthquakes have catastrophic consequences. Over two decades ago, metamaterials emerged in materials science as an innovative solution in vibration control devices. Metamaterials are engineered composite materials that exhibit uncommon properties not typically found in natural materials. They are designed to filter incident waves in multiple engineering applications and are usually used in small scales for acoustic, thermal, electromagnetic, and energy applications. More recently, a new class of large-scale mechanical metamaterials known as seismic metamaterials has been designed to mitigate the impact of catastrophic earthquake events. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review of seismic metamaterials designed for civil engineering applications toward vibration mitigation, including structural control devices and seismic metamaterials surrounding areas covering community-level scale (phononic and locally resonant metabarriers) or installed at the base of the building (metafoundations). Most of this review paper focuses on the published peer-reviewed work for the past 3 years. It identifies current limitations, opportunities, and future directions for this emerging technology.