Nonlinear Wave Propagation and Solitary Wave Formation in Two-Dimensional Heterogeneous Media

Abstract

Solitary wave formation is a well studied nonlinear phenomenon arising in propagation of dispersive nonlinear waves under suitable conditions. In non-homogeneous materials, dispersion may happen due to effective reflections between the material interfaces. This dispersion has been used along with nonlinearities to find solitary wave formation using the one-dimensional p-system. These solitary waves are called stegotons. The main goal in this work is to find two-dimensional stegoton formation. To do so we consider the nonlinear two-dimensional p-system with variable coefficients and solve it using finite volume methods. The second goal is to obtain effective equations that describe the macroscopic behavior of the variable coefficient system by a constant coefficient one. This is done through a homogenization process based on multiple-scale asymptotic expansions. We compare the solution of the effective equations with the finite volume results and find a good agreement. Finally, we study some stability properties of the homogenized equations and find they and one-dimensional versions of them are unstable in general.