Dynamic behaviour of concrete containing aggregate resonant frequency

Abstract

The need to design blast resistant civilian structures has arisen due to aggressor attacks on many civilian structures around the world. Achieving vibration and wave attenuation with locally resonant metamaterials has attracted a great deal of consideration due to their frequency dependent negative effective mass density. In this paper, metaconcrete, a new material with exceptional properties is formed. The aggregates in concrete are substituted with spherical inclusions consisting of a heavy metal core coated with a soft outer layer. The physics of the metamaterial was first established, and mass in mass-spring and effective mass system were shown to be equivalent. Then the engineered aggregate was tuned so that band gap was activated due to resonant oscillations of the replaced aggregate. In the numerical experiment conducted, the resonant behaviour causes the wave to be forbidden in the targeted frequencies. The proposed metaconcrete could be very useful in various civil engineering applications where vibration suspension and wave attenuation ability are in high demand.