Experimental demonstration of excitation and propagation of intrinsic localized modes in a mass–spring chain

Abstract Excitation and propagation of nonlinear localized oscillations are demonstrated experimentally by using a mass–spring chain to emulate those in the celebrated Fermi–Pasta–Ulam chain of β type. Two types of experiments are performed, one corresponding to a boundary-value problem and the other to an initial-value one. In the former experiment, one end of the chain is driven sinusoidally in the direction of the chain above a cut-off frequency. In the latter experiment, only a number of weights centered around the weight in the middle of the chain are held displaced initially and released suddenly. The experimental results show quantitatively good agreements with the numerical ones. Two videos linked also show visually mobile and stationary localized oscillations.