AbstractPropagation of nonlinear waves in solid waveguides is a branch of wave mechanics that has received ever-increasing interest in the last few decades. Nonlinear guided waves are promising candidates for interrogating long waveguide-like structures as they conveniently combine high sensitivity to peculiar structural conditions (defects, quasi-static loads, instability conditions), typical of nonlinear parameters, with large inspection ranges, characteristic of wave propagation in confined media. However, the mathematical framework governing the nonlinear guided wave phenomena becomes extremely difficult when characterized to waveguides that are complex in either material (damping, anisotropy, heterogeneous, and the like) or geometry (multilayers, geometric periodicity, and the like). Therefore, the successful use of nonlinear guided waves as a structural diagnostic tool is not always a trivial task. In particular, the efficiency of nonlinear structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques based on high...