Experimental Evidence of Solitary Wave Interaction in Hertzian Chains

We study experimentally the interaction between two solitary waves that approach one another in a linear chain of spheres interacting via the Hertz potential. When these counterpropagating waves collide, they cross each other and a phase shift in respect to the noninteracting waves is introduced as a result of the nonlinear interaction potential. This observation is well reproduced by our numerical simulations and is shown to be independent of viscoelastic dissipation at the bead contact. In addition, when the collision of equal amplitude and synchronized counterpropagating waves takes place, we observe that two secondary solitary waves emerge from the interacting region. The amplitude of the secondary solitary waves is proportional to the amplitude of incident waves. However, secondary solitary waves are stronger when the collision occurs at the middle contact in chains with an even number of beads. Although numerical simulations correctly predict the existence of these waves, experiments show that their respective amplitudes are significantly larger than predicted. We attribute this discrepancy to the rolling friction at the bead contact during solitary wave propagation. © 2011 American Physical Society.