Scientific challenges
The META-FORET project aims to experimentally test two geophysical configurations from which metamaterial physics - inducing seismic cloaking and/or seismic protection - can be conclusively demonstrated. An essential route from physics to geophysics, will be to demonstrate through numerical simulations and laboratory scale experiments that such up-scaling is meaningful, that is, we will precisely show that the metamaterial designs applied using small objects at the laboratory scale actually lead to large-scale demonstrations at the geophysics scale.
Manipulating, at the geophysics scale, the use of a collection of long vertical tree-like resonators outside the ground or concrete-like inclusions inside the ground, with both systems behaving as a seismic metamaterial, is the main goal of the META-FORET project and completely fundamental for future understanding of wave cancellation or wave bending for seismic surface waves.
The META-FORET project is prospective and exploratory, for the following three reasons: