Advancing infrastructure resilience through seismic metamaterials: Current insights and future prospects

This review explores recent advancements in seismic metamaterials, focusing on their compositions, such as auxetic polymers, piezoelectric composites, and cementitious matrices, which enable unique properties like negative effective moduli and local resonance. These properties facilitate wave attenuation, redirection, or cloaking through mechanisms such as band gaps and Bragg scattering. Novel designs, including hierarchical unit cells and bioinspired resonators, achieve up to 40% seismic wave amplitude reduction in simulations, targeting low- and broadband frequencies critical for protecting buildings and bridges. This paper discusses scalable synthesis methods, including 3D printing of geopolymer-based metamaterials, and their integration into concrete foundations. However, challenges related to cost-effective production, long-term durability under environmental stressors, and compatibility with existing infrastructure persist. Future research directions emphasize chemically adaptive systems, such as stimuli-responsive polymers and self-healing composites, to enhance multifunctionality and practical deployment. By bridging material chemistry with seismic engineering, this work highlights the potential of seismic metamaterials to revolutionize earthquake-resistant infrastructure, offering sustainable solutions for urban safety. • Comprehensive review of seismic metamaterials focused on Seismic metamaterials. • Synthesizes simulation, laboratory, and field evidence for practical deployment. • Identifies scalable fabrication routes and durability challenges for real structures. • Roadmap for adaptive, multifunctional metamaterials for infrastructure resilience.