Meta-fence for Rayleigh wave isolation

The protection of infrastructures against earthquakes has been a primary objective within the field of civil engineering. The emergence of seismic metamaterials has offered an unprecedented opportunity to design advanced aseismic structures over the last decade. However, a large number of subwavelength resonators that span multiple wavelengths are always required, resulting in a bulky size of existing seismic metamaterials. In this work, we introduce an aboveground single-layer meta-fence to omnidirectionally isolate Rayleigh waves. Based on mode conversion and reflection, the meta-fence can be configured into an enclosed region to effectively safeguard inner infrastructures by reducing the amplitude by 85 %. Furthermore, the designed meta-fence can operate across a wide frequency spectrum ranging from 17 to 200 Hz. Compared with previous seismic metamaterials, our scheme of meta-fence exhibits a distinct advantage in compact size, thereby enhancing applicability in earthquake protection.