Adaptive WAve control for energy-autonomous structures through Active REsilient metamaterials

The AWARE project (Adaptive WAve control for energy-autonomous structures through Active REsilient metamaterials) addresses a central challenge inadvanced structural engineering: transforming vibrations, elastic waves, and dynamic loads from sources of degradation and vulnerability into controllable,dissipable, and reusable resources. AWARE will develop a new generation of active and resilient mechanical metamaterials, conceived as adaptive cyber-physical systems able to modify behavior in response to operating conditions. The project thus overcomes the paradigm of passive materials, introducingmultifunctional architectures that combine wave control, structural protection, recoverability, and energy-autonomous functionalities. The central scientificchallenge consists in reconciling competing requirements: attenuating and guiding elastic waves, dissipating energy in controlled ways, preserving structuralfunctionality after severe events, and exploiting available mechanical energy to power distributed intelligent systems. To this end, AWARE will developmetamaterial architectures operating predominantly in the elastic regime, ensuring resilience, reusability, and functional recovery even after intense loadingconditions. Dissipation will be locally concentrated through engineered nonlinear mechanisms, such as snap-through instabilities, multistability, hysteresis,and interfacial friction, embedded in multilevel and multilayer microstructures designed to confine damage and preserve the global structural response. Adistinctive element will be the integration of feedback-based active control strategies, relying on multiscale elastodynamic models and distributed actuators.This approach will enable real-time modification of local mechanical properties and govern wave propagation through selective filtering, wave steering,energy focusing, and directional management of vibrational flows. Under ordinary operating conditions, the architectures will concentrate elastic energy infunctional regions through wave trapping. The localized energy may then be converted through magneto-electro-elastic couplings into electrical energy topower embedded sensors, structural health monitoring systems, and low-power devices. To integrate these functionalities into a single adaptive platform,AWARE will develop a multiscale inverse-design framework combining dynamic homogenization, nonlinear modelling, multi-objective topology optimization,uncertainty quantification, and machine learning. The framework will establish predictive relationships between microstructural configuration andmacroscopic response, identifying solutions that balance wave control, resilience, energy efficiency, recoverability, and manufacturability. The expectedresults will enable metamaterials for critical infrastructures, aerospace systems, naval platforms, and smart structures, turning mechanical energy into aresource for safety, functionality, and autonomy.