Self-modulation of acoustic waves in resonant bars

Observations of the induced transparency in the oscillations of a glass bar containing an “artificial crack” in the form of a saw-cut with a tightly inserted small metal plate are reported. In such a configuration, the increase of the resonator quality factor with increasing wave amplitude (denoting a decrease of dissipation which will be referred to as self-induced transparency) has been observed indicating an important role of the amplitude-dependent losses introduced by the inter-surface contacts. The self-induced transparency manifests itself also by the discontinuities (jumps) in the acoustic wave amplitude measured as a function of sweeping excitation frequency around the sample eigenfrequencies and by a self-modulation instability of the primary acoustic wave. This instability leads to the generation of side-lobes in the wave spectrum near the fundamental excitation frequency. The developed theoretical model confirms that all these observations can be self-consistently attributed to nonlinearity of the sound dissipation process. Possible physical mechanisms of the nonlinear dissipation are discussed. Although self-modulation has already been observed in nonlinear acoustical systems, to the knowledge of the authors, the reported data constitute the first observation of the instabilities due to essentially dissipative system behaviour that requires neither nonlinear elasticity nor multimode interaction.