Strain solitary waves in lengthy wave guides

During the last decade we have performed theoretical investigations and successful experimental research demonstrating the existence of bulk strain solitary waves in nonlinearly elastic solid wave guides. However in the previous experiments we were limited by relatively short wave guides (up to 150 mm long), that provoked some doubts in that the observed waves were really solitary waves. Here we demonstrate new experimental results on soliton behavior in a much longer wave guide (up to 570 mm long) made of polystyrene. It is shown that even at so long distances bulk solitons do not exhibit any decrease of amplitude or shape changes when propagating in an isotropic wave guide. On the contrary any of linear or shock waves in these material disappear completely at much shorter distances. The obvious physical applications of strain solitons are connected primarily with potential generation of such waves in elastic constructions, that was not considered before in calculations of their strength, plasticity and damage threshold. The possibility to record variations of strain soliton parameters in long wave guides gives an opportunity to obtain data on nonlinear wave dissipation in these materials.