Solitary waves in a peridynamic elastic solid

The propagation of large amplitude nonlinear waves in a peridynamic solid is analyzed. With an elastic material model that hardens in compression, sufficiently large wave pulses propagate as solitary waves whose velocity can far exceed the linear wave speed. In spite of their large velocity and amplitude, these waves leave the material they pass through with no net change in velocity and stress. They are nondissipative and nondispersive, and they travel unchanged over large distances. An approximate solution for solitary waves is derived that reproduces the main features of these waves observed in computational simulations. It is demonstrated by numerical studies that the waves interact only weakly with each other when they collide. Wavetrains composed of many non-interacting solitary waves are found to form and propagate under certain boundary and initial conditions.