Numerical study of formation of solitary strain waves in a nonlinear elastic layered composite material

Propagation of nonlinear strain waves through a layered composite material is considered. The governing macroscopic wave equation for the long-wave case was obtained earlier by the higher-order asymptotic homogenization method (Andrianov et al., 2013). Non-stationary dynamic processes are investigated by a pseudo-spectral numerical procedure. The time integration is performed by the Runge–Kutta method; the approximation with respect to the spatial co-ordinate is provided by the Fourier series expansion. The convergence of the Fourier series is substantially improved and the Gibbs–Wilbraham phenomenon is reduced with the help of Padé approximants. As result, we explore how fast and under what conditions the solitary strain waves can be generated from an initial excitation. The numerical and analytical solutions (when the latter can be obtained) are in good agreement.