We present a dynamically tunable mechanism of wave transmission in 1D helicoidal phononic crystals in a shape similar to DNA structures. These helicoidal architectures allow slanted nonlinear contact among cylin- drical constituents, and the relative torsional movements can dynamically tune the contact stiffness between neighboring cylinders. This results in cross-talking between in-plane torsional and out-of-plane longitudinal waves. We numerically demonstrate their versatile wave mixing and controllable dispersion behavior in both wavenumber and frequency domains. Based on this principle, a suggestion towards an acoustic configuration bearing parallels to a transistor is further proposed, in which longitudinal waves can be switched on/off through torsional waves.
@article{arxiv.1408.6121,
title = {Time- and space-variant wave transmission in helicoidal phononic crystals},
author = {F. Li and C. Chong and J. Yang and P. G. Kevrekidis and C. Daraio},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.6121},
year = {2014}
}