Nonreciprocal propagation of solitary waves in granular chains with asymmetric potential barriers

In the study presented in this paper, nonreciprocal propagation of highly nonlinear solitary waves (HNSWs) along one-dimensional chains of spherical particles is attained by inserting asymmetric potential barriers inside the chains. The barriers partially reflect the waves propagating along one direction whereas pass the waves along the opposite direction. This nonreciprocal effect is investigated numerically for different number of barriers, and for various barriers' stiffness. The results indicate that more and stiffer barriers provide better unidirectional transmission than soft barriers. In the future, the unidirectional transmission effect observed in this study could be applied for acoustic switching or acoustic rectification. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.