Anisotropic and dispersive wave propagation within strain-gradient framework

In this paper anisotropic and dispersive wave propagation within linear strain-gradient elasticity is investigated. This analysis reveals significant features of this extended theory of continuum elasticity. First, and contrarily to classical elasticity, wave propagation in hexagonal (chiral or achiral) lattices becomes anisotropic as the frequency increases. Second, since strain-gradient elasticity is dispersive, group and energy velocities have to be treated as different quantities. These points are first theoretically derived, and then numerically experienced on hexagonal chiral and achiral lattices. The use of a continuum model for the description of the high frequency behavior of these microstructured materials can be of great interest in engineering applications, allowing problems with complex geometries to be more easily treated

Uniform line fillings

Deterministic fabrication of random metamaterials requires filling of a space with randomly oriented and randomly positioned chords with an on-average homogenous density and orientation, which is a nontrivial task. We describe a method to generate fillings with such chords, lines that run from edge to edge of the space, in any dimension. We prove that the method leads to random but on-average homogeneous and rotationally invariant fillings of circles, balls and arbitrary-dimensional hyperballs from which other shapes such as rectangles and cuboids can be cut. We briefly sketch the historic context of Bertrand's paradox and Jaynes' solution by the principle of maximum ignorance. We analyse the statistical properties of the produced fillings, mapping out the density profile and the line-length distribution and comparing them to analytic expressions. We study the characteristic dimensions of the space in between the chords by determining the largest enclosed circles and balls in this pore space, finding a lognormal distribution of the pore sizes. We apply the algorithm to the direct-laser-writing fabrication design of optical multiple-scattering samples as three-dimensional cubes of random but homogeneously positioned and oriented chords.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures; v3: restructured paper, more references, more graph