“Deflecting elastic prism” and unidirectional localisation for waves in chiral elastic systems

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 26 - 11
• Main Authors: Carta, G., Jones, I. S., Movchan, N. V., Movchan, A. B., Nieves, M. J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 31.01.2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/301/1023; 639/705/1041; 639/766/25; Humanities and Social Sciences; Localization; multidisciplinary; Partial differential equations; Propagation; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-00054-6

For the first time, a design of a “deflecting elastic prism” is proposed and implemented for waves in a chiral medium. A novel model of an elastic lattice connected to a non-uniform system of gyroscopic spinners is designed to create a unidirectional wave pattern, which can be diverted by modifying the arrangement of the spinners within the medium. This important feature of the gyro-system is exploited to send a wave from a point of the lattice to any other point in the lattice plane, in such a way that the wave amplitude is not significantly reduced along the path. We envisage that the proposed model could be very useful in physical and engineering applications related to directional control of elastic waves.