The increasing traffic intensity on roads, highways, and railways requires that major investments be made to make transportation systems more livable and sustainable, especially in the UTRC Region II area. This is due to the high density population in the NYC Metropolitan area where the high speeds and a large capacity of vehicles and trains are highly desired. Such transportation systems create new technical and environmental challenges including noise and ground vibration, which affect ambient architectures, quality of life, and sustainability of the communities. Noise and vibration assessments become key elements of the environmental impact assessment process for mass transit projects, and noise and vibration are among the major concerns with regard to the effects of a transit project on the surrounding community.

The research objective of this project is to design an efficient and economic method to mitigate the vibration induced by transportation activities. Specifically, we propose to use periodically arranged piles in the ground called seismic metamaterials, which attenuate the vibration through the scattering and local resonance phenomena. To achieve this, a computational-experimental framework including integrated modeling, simulation, optimal design, and experimental validation will be developed. First, we will examine the effectiveness of the proposed seismic metamaterials to mitigate transportation induced vibration through threedimensional numerical simulations. Second, we will develop a method for the design and optimization of the structured seismic metamaterials with the desired vibration mitigation capability in the targeted frequency range, with proper combination of constituent phases. Third, scaled experimental investigations will be performed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed optimal seismic metamaterials.