Multiscale Methods for simulations of mechanical metamaterials

This project concerns the development of efficient multiscale methods for simulations of mechanicalmetamaterials.

Metamaterials are engineered materials with unconventional physical propertiessuch as artificial magnetism, frequency band gaps and negative index of refraction.

The overallgoal of this proposal is to explore (via numerical simulations and mathematical analysis) differentpossibilities of designing next generation seismic metamaterials to prevent the damages thatground vibrations, originating from earthquakes or daily transportation means such as railways,may have on buildings.

The project is divided into four phases, and will be carried out mainly bythe applicant (Doghonay Arjmand) together with two research engineers that will be hired at differentphases of the project.

Novel multiscale algorithms, bypassing the computational and theoreticallimitations of existing algorithms will be developed.

In particular, it will be possible to get rid of thegeometric constraints, such as periodicity or spherical symmetries, assumed in the majority ofrecent results in the field.

Main ingredients are a) designing an efficient multiscale coupling for high-contrastproblems b) analysis of errors coming from coupling small scales variations to large scales,c) developing an authomated open source multiscale solver.