Dispersive-dissipative solitons in nonlinear solids

It is found that the propagation of long nonlinear longitudinal strain wave s in an elastic rod embedded in a viscoelastic external medium may be gover ned by a nonlinear dispersive-dissipative equation with an appropriate inpu t-output energy balance. This equation admits exact traveling solitary wave solutions. When dissipation is small enough an initially dissipationless s train solitary wave is shown to transform to a dissipative solitary wave wi th prescribed parameters. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserve d.