Mechanical Rainbow Trapping and Bloch Oscillations in Structured Elastic Beams

Abstract

We demonstrate, both experimentally and numerically, the mechanical rainbow trapping effect and the mechanical Bloch oscillations for torsional waves propagating in chirped mechanical beams. After extensive simulations, three quasi-one-dimensional chirped structures were designed, constructed and experimentally characterized by Doppler spectroscopy. When the chirp intensity vanishes a perfect periodic system, with bands and gaps, is obtained. The mechanical rainbow trapping effect occurs for small values of the chirp intensity. The wave packet traveling along the beam is progressively slowing down and is reflected back at a certain depth, which depends on its central frequency. In this case a new kind of oscillation, here named "{\em rectified rainbow-Bloch oscillation}", appears since the wave packet is reflected at one side by the interface between the structure and the uniform rod and by the minigap at the opposite side. For larger values of the chirp parameter the rainbow trapping yields the penetration length where the mechanical Bloch oscillations emerge. Numerical simulations based on the transfer matrix method are in agreement with experimental data.