  Physical principles for designing artificial materials with energy absorbing
and wave guiding properties are discussed in the present work. The idea is to
insert light particles in a lattice of elastically coupled potential wells
representing soft-wall versions of the so-called stochastic billiards. A planar
case of a single potential well attached to the base with a linearly elastic
spring and including one or few small particles was considered earlier. Here,
we analyze the evolution of waves in a one-dimensional lattice of 3D potential
wells with light particles inside. By assigning the initial conditions
corresponding to propagating waves we found that the waves can be quickly
destroyed by increasing the mass of particles while certain shapes of the
potential containers provide a quasi-one-directional energy flow from the chain
of containers into the chaotically moving particles by increasing the
temperature of the lattice.
