Strain solitary waves in lengthy waveguides

Abstract

During the last decade we have performed theoretical investigations and successful experimental researchdemonstrating the existence of bulk strain solitary waves in nonlinearly elastic solid wave guides. However in theprevious experiments we were limited byrelativelyshort wave guides (up to 150 mm long), that pr ovoked some doubtsin that the observed waves were really solitary waves. Here we demonstrate new experimental results on solitonbehavior in a much longer wave guide (up to 570 mm long) made of polystyrene. It is shown that even at so longdistances bulk solitons do not exhibit any decrease of amplitude or shape changes when propagating in an isotropicwave guide. On the contrary any of linear or shock waves in these material disappear completely at much shorterdistances. The obvious physical applications of strain so litonsareconnected primarilywith potential generation ofsuchwaves in elastic constructions, that was not considered before in calculations of their strength, plasticity and damagethreshold. The possibility to record variations of strain soliton parameters in long wave guides gives an opportunity toobtain data on nonlinear wave dissipation in these materials.Keywords: Non-linear elastic waves, Strain solitons, Elastic wave decay, Holographic interferometry.