Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-98).

The propagation of waves through nonlinear media is of interest here, namely as it pertains to two specific examples, a nonlinear dielectric and a hyperelastic solid. In both cases, we examine the propagation of two-dimensional, weakly nonlinear, quasi-planar waves. It is found that such systems will have a nonlinearity that is intrinsically cubic, and therefore, a classical Zabolotskaya-Khokhlov equation cannot give an accurate description of the wave evolution. To determine the general evolution equation in such systems, a multi-timing technique developed by Kluwick and Cox (1998) and Cramer and Webb (1998) will be employed. The resultant evolution equations are seen to involve only one new nonlinearity coefficient rather than the three coefficients found in other studies of cubically nonlinear systems. After determining the general evolution equation, inclusion of relaxation, dispersion and dissipation effects can be easily incorporated. / Master of Science

In this study, we consider the generalized function solutions to nonlinear wave equation with distribution initial data. J. F. Colombeau shows that the initial value problem u_tt - Δu = F(u); m(x,0) = U_0; u_t (x,0) = i_1 where the initial data u_0 and u_1 are generalized functions, has a unique generalized function solution u. Here we take a specific F and specific distributions u_0, u_1 then inspect the generalized function representatives for the initial value problem solution to see if the generalized function solution is a distribution or is more singular. Using the numerical technics, we show for specific F and specific distribution initial data u_0, u_1, there is no distribution solution.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 176 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-176). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

It is known that there are nonlinear wave equations with localized solitary wave solutions. Some of these solitary waves are stable (with respect to a small perturbation of initial data)and have nonzero spin (nonzero intrinsic angular momentum in the centre of momentum frame). In this paper we consider vector-valued solitary wave solutions to a nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation and investigate the behavior of these spinning solitary waves under the influence of an externally imposed uniform magnetic field. We find that the only stationary spinning solitary wave solutions have spin parallel or antiparallel to the magnetic field direction.

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In this thesis, we prove the existence of large frequency periodic solutions for the nonlinear wave equations utt − uxx − v(x)u = u3 + [fnof]([Omega]t, x) (1) with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Here, [Omega] represents the frequency of the solution. The method we use to find the periodic solutions u([Omega]) for large [Omega] originates in the work of Craig and Wayne [10] where they constructed solutions for free vibrations, i.e., for [fnof] = 0. Here we construct smooth solutions for forced vibrations ([fnof] [not equal to] 0). Given an x-dependent analytic potential v(x) previous works on (1) either assume a smallness condition on [fnof] or yields a weak solution. The study of equations like (1) goes back at least to Rabinowitz in the sixties [25]. The main difficulty in finding periodic solutions of an equation like (1), is the appearance of small denominators in the linearized operator stemming from the left hand side. To overcome this difficulty, we used a Nash-Moser scheme introduced by Craig and Wayne in [10]. / text

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 134 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-134). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center