The study of wave propagation in chiral elastic systems has important potential
applications in areas such as controlling vibrations and wave filtering. Although the
behaviour of elastic waves in traditional elastic media is well understood, how elastic
waves behave in chiral materials is still to be further explored. We present an
analytical study of elastic waves in a new continuous chiral elastic material, focusing
on (i) the development of the new continuum model based on a class of discrete
elastic metamaterials and (ii) the study of dispersion behaviour of elastic waves in
this new chiral material. The effective material developed is isotropic and
characterized by both elastic moduli and coupling parameters, associated with
chirality. The dispersion relation and the corresponding waveforms are studied to
evaluate the general behaviour of wave propagation in this new chiral medium.
Different from the property of waves in traditional isotropic elastic media, generally
no independent longitudinal or transverse waves can be observed in the new chiral
medium except for cases at specific frequencies. The analytical findings are
accompanied by illustrative numerical examples to show the general property of the
dispersion and wave modes.
