Reduced-scale ultrasonic modelling of Rayleigh wave transmission over seismic barriers formed by periodic arrays of vertical holes

Seismic barriers are used widely to protect buildings from traffic-induced ground vibrations, mainly from propagating Rayleigh surface waves. Experimental investigations of real size seismic barriers at frequencies typical for traffic-induced ground vibrations, i.e. at 10-100 Hz, are costly and time consuming. In the present work, an alternative and much less expensive approach is proposed - a reduced-scale experimental modelling using ultrasonic Rayleigh wave propagation over very small-scale replicas of real seismic barriers. Experimental investigations of propagation of Rayleigh wave pulses with the central frequency of 1 MHz have been carried out for seismic barriers formed by periodic arrays of vertical holes in Aluminium samples. Measurements of transmission and reflection coefficients of Rayleigh waves for different types of arrays and for different incident angles have been carried out and compared with the earlier published results obtained for real seismic barriers.