Transformational cloaking from seismic surface waves by micropolar metamaterials with finite couple stiffness

Transformational elastodynamics can be used to protect sensitive structures from harmful waves and vibrations. By designing the material properties in a region around the sensitive structure, a cloak, the incident waves can be redirected as to cause minimal or no harmful response on the pertinent structure. In this paper, we consider such transformational cloaking built up by a suitably designed metamaterial exhibiting micropolar properties. First, a theoretically perfect cloak is obtained by designing the properties of an (unphysical) restricted micropolar material within the surrounding medium. Secondly, we investigate the performance of the cloak under more feasible design criteria, relating to finite elastic parameters. In particular, the behavior of a physically realizable cloak built up by unrestricted micropolar elastic media is investigated. Numerical studies are conducted for the case of buried as well as surface breaking structures in 2D subjected to incident Rayleigh waves pertinent to seismic loading. The studies show how the developed cloaking procedure can be utilized to substantially reduce the response of the structure. In particular, the results indicate the performance of the cloak in relation to constraints on the elastic parameters. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.