Metamaterial-based Foundation System endowed with Non-Linear Oscillators

Metamaterials represent a new trend in the field of seismic engineering. Their capacity to attenuate waves at the superstructure level is highly desirable and sought after in recent years. One of their main drawbacks to date, is the excessive size of the necessary resonators and, consequently, the uneconomic design they require. In order to tackle this problem, we apply the concept of negative stiffness to a metamaterial-based foundation system and analyse the potential improvements such a mechanism may have on the metamaterial as well as the coupled structural behaviour.