We experimentally study a one-dimensional uncompressed granular chain composed of a finite number of identical spherical beads with Hertzian interactions. The chain is harmonically excited by an amplitude- and frequency-dependent boundary drive at its left end and has a fixed boundary at its right end. Such ordered granular media represent an interesting new class of nonlinear acoustic metamaterials, since they exhibit essentially nonlinear acoustics and have been designated as 'sonic vacua' due to the fact that their corresponding speed of sound (as defined in classical acoustics) is zero.This paves the way for essentially nonlinear and energy-dependent acoustics with no counterparts in linear theory. We experimentally detect time-periodic, strongly nonlinear resonances whereby the particles (beads) of the granular chain respond at integer multiples of the excitation period, and which correspond to local peaks of the maximum transmitted force at the chain's right, fixed end.In between these resonances we detect a local minimum of the maximum transmitted forces corresponding to an anti-resonance in the stationary-state dynamics. The experimental results of this work confirm previous theoretical predictions, and verify the existence of strongly nonlinear resonance responses in a system with a complete absence of any linear spectrum; as such, the experimentally detected nonlinear resonance spectrum is passively tunable with energy and sensitive to dissipative effects such as internal structural damping in the beads, and friction or plasticity effects. The experimental results are verified by direct numerical simulations and by numerical stability analysis.
