Traveling fronts in dissipative granular chains and nonlinear lattices

Short-pulse dynamics in strongly nonlinear dissipative granular chains.

We study the energy decay properties of a pulse propagating in a strongly nonlinear granular chain with damping proportional to the relative velocity of the grains. We observe a wave disturbance that at low viscosities consists of two parts exhibiting two entirely different time scales of dissipation. One part is an attenuating solitary wave, dominated by discreteness and nonlinearity effects a...

Periodic Traveling Waves in Diatomic Granular Chains

Nonlinear Waves in Granular Lattices

We present a numerical study of solitary waves in one dimensional (1D) granular lattices. Our system consists of an array of deformable spheres which we model using Hertzian interactions between neighbouring bodies. A general discussion of the origin of solitary waves is presented. We then provide an analysis of the Hertz force. For the case of a uniform chain of spheres, we derive an approxima...

One-dimensional dynamics for traveling fronts in coupled map lattices

Multistable coupled map lattices typically support traveling fronts, separating two adjacent stable phases. We show how the existence of an invariant function describing the front profile allows a reduction of the infinitely dimensional dynamics to a one-dimensional circle homeomorphism, whose rotation number gives the propagation velocity. The mode locking of the velocity with respect to the s...

Observation of two-wave structure in strongly nonlinear dissipative granular chains.

In a strongly nonlinear viscous granular chain impacted by a single grain we observe a wave disturbance that consists of two parts exhibiting two time scales of dissipation. Above a critical viscosity there is no separation of the two pulses, and the dissipation and nonlinearity dominate the shocklike attenuating pulse.