Striker impact on granular chains generates solitary waves or shocklike wave depending on ramp time of incoming pulse

It is well known that striker impact on strongly nonlinear, nondissipative, or weakly dissipative granular chains assembled from spheres (or cylinders with flat ends and spheres) having similar masses results in strongly nonlinear Nesterenko solitary waves over a very short distance from the impacted end. This paper presents the first experimental results on how the nature of the wave response, excited by striker impact on strongly nonlinear weakly dissipative discrete chains, depends on the ramp time of the incoming pulse. Variation of the pulse ramp time was accomplished using "hard" and "soft" striker impact. In the case of "hard" impact, the incoming pulse with relatively short ramp time was split into Nesterenko solitary waves after traveling about 20 particles, as in previous publications. The "soft" impact by the same striker with the same velocity was achieved by placing a small mass PTFE spherical particle inside a PTFE O-ring at the top of the first cylinder resulting in significantly longer ramp time of the incoming pulse. The incoming pulse generated by "soft" impact did not split into a train of solitary waves despite initial steepening of the wave's leading front due to strong nonlinearity. Instead, it traveled as a shocklike stress wave a long distance of 131 particles. Thus, the generation of a train of solitary waves or a shocklike stress wave in a weakly dissipative, strongly nonlinear discrete chain depends on the duration of the incoming pulse ramp. Ramping the incoming pulse resulted in a dramatic decrease in shocklike stress wave amplitude in comparison with the amplitude of the leading solitary wave in the case of "hard" impact.