Asymmetry of compression and sheer in porous media is considered. Sinc
e the shear causes infinite stresses across the contacts, the models o
f partial creep in shear are used to exclude the infinite stresses. Th
e inelastic behavior in the shear nonlinear equations of motion corres
ponding to the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equations in one-dimension lead
to purely imaginary nonlinear term. This causes absorption and disper
sion of P and especially S waves. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All r
ights reserved.