Engineering: It’s shocking

 

A new method of diverting shockwaves from earthquakes could help protect buildings and infrastructure.

Seismic waves produced by earthquakes have body waves and surface waves. Body waves travel through the earth while surface waves travel over the top. Surface waves are responsible for most of the damage.

The research, from the University of Liverpool, highlights how it is theoretically possible to control and divert surfaces waves by the use of concentric plastic rings fitted on the ground.

Through controlling the rings’ elasticity and flexibility, some of the shock can be compressed into the material and diverted into an arc that will deflect the waves outside of the ‘cloak’ of the protected area.

Speaking about the development Sebastien Guenneau, from Liverpool’s Department of Mathematics, said: “We are able to ‘tune’ the cloak to the differing frequencies of incoming waves which means we can divert waves of a variety of frequencies. For each small frequency range, there is a pair of rings which does most of the work and these move about a lot – bending up and down – when they are hit by a wave at their frequency.

“The waves are then directed outside the cloak where they return to their previous size. The cloak does not reflect waves – they continue to travel behind it with the same intensity. At this stage, therefore, we can only transfer the risk from one area to another, rather than eliminate it completely.”

The next stage of work is focused on moving from the theoretical to the practical.

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