General solution for interaction of solitary waves including head-on collisions

A general solution of the Boussinesq equation is presented which solves the problem of interaction of any number of right-going and left-going solitary waves. The solution relies on the exact solution of Gardner, Greene, Kruskal, and Miura (1967), and has the same degree of accuracy as that solution, but has a wider scope of application. It is much simpler than, but as accurate as, Hirota's exact solution (1973) of the Boussinesq equation, to which the present solution is compared for the simplest case of two solitary waves in head-on collision.