Solitary waves in a magneto-electro-elastic circular rod

A simple nonlinear model is proposed in this paper to study the solitary wave in a circular magneto-electro-elastic rod. Based on the constitutive relation for transversely isotropic piezoelectric and piezomagnetic materials, combined with the differential equations of motion, we derive the longitudinal wave motion equation in a long circular rod. The nonlinearity considered is geometrically associated with the nonlinear normal strain in the longitudinal rod direction and the transverse Poisson’s effect is included by introducing the effective Poisson’s ratio. The nonlinear solitary wave equation is solved by the Jacobi elliptic function expansion method and numerical examples demonstrate not only the existence of such a wave but also some interesting characteristics of the solitary wave in the rod made of different multiphase coupled materials. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)