Breathers, losses and transition waves in a driven chain of coupled bistable units

We consider in this work a prototypical metamaterial chain made of linearly coupled bistable units. These systems have been shown, depending on their specific bistable potential, inertial, loss, or coupling properties, to support kinks, transition waves, solitons or breathers. Here we report on the interaction of moving breathers in such multistable lattice, and the conditions for which a collision leads to the triggering of transition waves, eventually reconfiguring the metamaterial state from a desired position within it. We analyze the role of losses in this triggering process and show that they strongly affect the propagation and collision outcomes. To experimentally observe breathers and their interactions in such a metamaterial chain, we design a continuously driven chain effectively exhibiting no loss effect for a given breather when the driving conditions are optimal. Preliminary results lead to the observation of sustained localized breathers in such chain and to their destabilization via the adequate changes in the driving, in turn triggering a transition wave. These results could be interesting for the wave-based manipulation of mechanical memory within multistable mechanical metamaterials and for their advanced reconfiguration via transition waves.