Granular chains for the assessment of thermal stress in slender structures

Slender beams subjected to compressive stress are common in civil and mechanical engineering. The rapid in-situ measurement of this stress may prevent structural anomalies. In this paper, we describe the coupling mechanism between highly nonlinear solitary waves (HNSWs) propagating along an L-shaped granular system and a beam in contact with the granular medium. We evaluate the use of HNSWs as a tool to measure stress in thermally loaded structures and to estimate the neutral temperature, i.e. the temperature at which this stress is null. We investigated numerically and experimentally one and two L-shaped chains of spherical particles in contact with a prismatic beam subjected to heat. We found that certain features of the solitary waves are affected by the beam's stress. In the future, these findings may help developing a novel sensing system for the nondestructive prediction of neutral temperature and thermal buckling.