Wave propagation through an elastically-asymmetric architected material

TL;DR

This paper investigates wave propagation in elastically asymmetric metamaterials, revealing how elastic asymmetry affects wave speeds and energy dissipation, and provides analytical and numerical insights into wave damping and transmission properties.

Contribution

It introduces a class of elastically asymmetric metamaterials and analyzes their wave damping and transmission characteristics both analytically and numerically.

Findings

Asymmetric media cause different wave speeds for tensile and compressive waves.

The length of asymmetric regions needed for effective damping is analytically determined.

Universal scaling law for wave transmission in asymmetric media is established.

Abstract

A one-dimensional wave propagation through elastically asymmetric media is investigated. A class of metamaterials possessing an arbitrary elastic asymmetry is proposed. This asymmetry results in different wave speeds of tensile and compressive components of elastic waves. The faster component can overtake the slower one resulting in their dissipative annihilation through energy cascades. Efficient absorbing assemblies are presented and analysed numerically. The length of the asymmetric part needed to damp a harmonic signal is determined analytically and validated numerically. Transmission properties for random self-affine wave-packets are studied: a universal scaling for the transmission factor variation with the length of the asymmetric part was established.