From the point of view of approximate symmetry, the modified Korteweg-de Vries-Burgers （mKdV-Burgers） equation with weak dissipation is investigated. The symmetry of a system of the corresponding partial differential equations which approximate the perturbed mKdV-Burgers equation is constructed and the corresponding general approximate symmetry reduction is derived; thereby infinite series solutions and general formulae can be obtained. The obtained result shows that the zero-order similarity solution to the mKdV-Burgers equation satisfies the Painleve II equation. Also, at the level of travelling wave reduction, the general solution formulae are given for any travelling wave solution of an unperturbed mKdV equation. As an illustrative example, when the zero-order tanh profile solution is chosen as an initial approximate solution, physically approximate similarity solutions are obtained recursively under the appropriate choice of parameters occurring during computation.
The approximate direct reduction method is applied to the perturbed mKdV equation with weak fourth order dispersion and weak dissipation. The similarity reduction solutions of different orders conform to formal coherence, accounting for infinite series reduction solutions to the original equation and general formulas of similarity reduction equations. Painleve Ⅱ type equations, hyperbolic secant and Jacobi elliptic function solutions are obtained for zeroorder similarity reduction equations. Higher order similarity reduction equations are linear variable coefficient ordinary differential equations.
Shallow water waves and a host of long wave phenomena are commonly investigated by various models of nonlinear evolution equations. Examples include the Korteweg-de Vries, the Camassa-Holm, and the Whitham-Broer-Kaup （WBK） equations. Here a generalized WBK system is studied via the multi-linear variable separation approach. A special class of wave profiles with discontinuous derivatives （＂peakons＂） is developed. Peakons of various features, e.g. periodic, pulsating or fractal, are investigated and interactions of such entities are studied.
The analytical solution of a viscoelastic continuous beam whose damping characteristics are described in terms of a fractional derivative of arbitrary order was derived by means of the AdoInian decomposition method. The solution contains arbitrary initial conditions and zero input. For specific analysis, the initial conditions were assumed homogeneous, and the input force was treated as a special process with a particular beam. Two simple cases, step and impulse function responses, were considered respectively. Subsequently, some figures were plotted to show the displacement of the beam under different sets of parameters including different orders of the fractional derivatives.
This paper studies variable separation of the evolution equations via the generalized conditional symmetry. To illustrate, we classify the extended nonlinear wave equation utt = A（u, ux）uxx＋B（u, ux, ut） which admits the derivative- dependent functional separable solutions （DDFSSs）. We also extend the concept of the DDFSS to cover other variable separation approaches.
An approximate homotopy symmetry method for nonlinear problems is proposed and applied to the sixth-order Boussinesq equation,which arises from fluid dynamics.We summarize the general formulas for similarity reduction solutions and similarity reduction equations of different orders,educing the related homotopy series solutions.Zero-order similarity reduction equations are equivalent to the Painlevé IV type equation or Weierstrass elliptic equation.Higher order similarity solutions can be obtained by solving linear variable coefficients ordinary differential equations.The auxiliary parameter has an effect on the convergence of homotopy series solutions.Series solutions and similarity reduction equations from the approximate symmetry method can be retrieved from the approximate homotopy symmetry method.
JIAO XiaoYu1,GAO Yuan1 & LOU SenYue1,2,3 1 Department of Physics,Shanghai Jiao Tong University,Shanghai 200240,China
This paper studies the generalized Kawahara equation in terms of the approximate homotopy symmetry method and the approximate homotopy direct method. Using both methods it obtains the similarity reduction solutions and similarity reduction equations of different orders, showing that the approximate homotopy direct method yields more general approximate similarity reductions than the approximate homotopy symmetry method. The homotopy series solutions to the generalized Kawahara equation are consequently derived.
