Nonlinear modulation of Love waves in a compressible hyperelastic layered half-space (Q1113721)

This dense and well written paper examines the propagation of small but finite amplitude weakly nonlinear surface Love waves in a single layered half-space. The latter is nonlinear hyperelastic. It is shown that the nonlinear modulation of Love waves is governed by a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. This is obtained through the derivative-expansion method which belongs to the techniques of singular perturbations. A carefull analysis of the possibilities of soliton solutions and the modulational instability of plane waves for various nonlinear elastic properties of the layer and half-space is presented. In particular, surface envelope solitary waves may exist depending on the exact nonlinear constitution of the layered half-space. Because of the technique used, the analysis is not restricted to small wave numbers and low frequencies of the linear dispersion relation and this provides a neat improvement over previous approaches [e.g., \textit{K. Bataille} and \textit{F. Lund}, Nonlinear waves in elastic media. Physica D, 6, No.1, 95- 104 (1982)]. In addition, numerical estimates are given which delineate the domains of existence of soliton solutions for the first branch of the linear dispersion relation. This can also be done for other branches.