Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2015 (2015), Article ID 610979, 19 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/610979

Research Article

Traveling Wave Solutions of a Generalized Camassa-Holm Equation: A Dynamical System Approach

Lina Zhang and Tao Song

Department of Mathematics, Huzhou University, Huzhou, Zhejiang 313000, China

Received 1 August 2015; Accepted 14 September 2015

Academic Editor: Maria Gandarias

Copyright © 2015 Lina Zhang and Tao Song. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

We investigate a generalized Camassa-Holm equation : . We show that the equation can be reduced to a planar polynomial differential system by transformation of variables. We treat the planar polynomial differential system by the dynamical systems theory and present a phase space analysis of their singular points. Two singular straight lines are found in the associated topological vector field. Moreover, the peakon, peakon-like, cuspon, smooth soliton solutions of the generalized Camassa-Holm equation under inhomogeneous boundary condition are obtained. The parametric conditions of existence of the single peak soliton solutions are given by using the phase portrait analytical technique. Asymptotic analysis and numerical simulations are provided for single peak soliton, kink wave, and kink compacton solutions of the equation.

1. Introduction

Mathematical modeling of dynamical systems processing in a great variety of natural phenomena usually leads to nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). There is a special class of solutions for nonlinear PDEs that are of considerable interest, namely, the traveling wave solutions. Such a wave may be localized or periodic, which propagates at constant speed without changing its shape.

Many powerful methods have been presented for finding the traveling wave solutions, such as the Bäcklund transformation [1], tanh-coth method [2], bilinear method [3], symbolic computation method [4], and Lie group analysis method [5]. Furthermore, a great amount of works focused on various extensions and applications of the methods in order to simplify the calculation procedure. The basic idea of those methods is that, by introducing different types of Ansatz, the original PDEs can be transformed into a set of algebraic equations. Balancing the same order of the Ansatz then yields explicit expressions for the PDE waves. However, not all of the special forms for the PDE waves can be derived by those methods. In order to obtain all possible forms of the PDE waves and analyze qualitative behaviors of solutions, the bifurcation theory plays a very important role in studying the evolution of wave patterns with variation of parameters [6–9].

To study the traveling wave solutions of a nonlinear PDE

let and , where is the wave speed. Substituting them into (1) leads the PDE to the following ordinary differential equation:

Here, we consider the case of (2) which can be reduced to the following planar dynamical system:

through integrals. Equation (3) is called the traveling wave system of the nonlinear PDE (1). So, we just study the traveling wave system (3) to get the traveling wave solutions of the nonlinear PDE (1).

Let us begin with some well-known nonlinear wave equations. The first one is the Camassa-Holm (CH) equation [10]

arising as a model for nonlinear waves in cylindrical axially symmetric hyperelastic rods, with representing the radial stretch relative to a prestressed state where Camassa and Holm showed that (4) has a peakon of the form . Among the nonanalytic entities, the peakon, a soliton with a finite discontinuity in gradient at its crest, is perhaps the weakest nonanalyticity observable by the eye [11].

To understand the role of nonlinear dispersion in the formation of patters in liquid drop, Rosenau and Hyman [12] introduced and studied a family of fully nonlinear dispersion Korteweg-de Vries equations

This equation, denoted by , owns the property that, for certain and , its solitary wave solutions have compact support [12]. That is, they identically vanish outside a finite core region. For instance, the equation admits the following compacton solution:

The Camassa-Holm equation, the equation, and almost all integrable dispersive equations have the same class of traveling wave systems which can be written in the following form [13]:

where is the first integral. It is easy to see that (4) is actually a special case of (3) with . If there is a function such that , then is a vertical straight line solution of the system

where for . The two systems have the same topological phase portraits except for the vertical straight line and the directions in time. Consequently, we can obtain bifurcation and smooth solutions of the nonlinear PDE (1) through studying the system (8), if the corresponding orbits are bounded and do not intersect with the vertical straight line . However, the orbits, which do intersect with the vertical straight line or are unbounded but can approach the vertical straight line, correspond to the non-smooth singular traveling waves. It is worth of pointing out that traveling waves sometimes lose their smoothness during the propagation due to the existence of singular curves within the solution surfaces of the wave equation.

Most of these works are concentrated on the nonlinear wave equations with only a singular straight line [6–9]. But till now there have been few works on the integrable nonlinear equations with two singular straight lines or other types of singular curves [13–15].

In 2004, Tian and Yin [16] introduced the following fully nonlinear generalized Camassa-Holm equation :

where , , , , and are arbitrary real constants and , , and are positive integers. By using four direct ansatzs, they obtained kink compacton solutions, nonsymmetry compacton solutions, and solitary wave solutions for the and equations.

Generally, it is not an easy task to obtain a uniform analytic first integral of the corresponding traveling wave system of (9). In this paper, we consider the cases , , and . Then, (9) reduces to the equation

Actually, we have already considered a special equation in [17], namely, , , and , where the bifurcation of peakons are obtained by applying the qualitative theory of dynamical systems. In this work, a more general equation (10) is studied. Different bifurcation curves are derived to divide the parameter space into different regions associated with different types of phase trajectories. Meanwhile, it is interesting to point out that the corresponding traveling wave system of (10) has two singular straight lines compared with (4), which therefore gives rise to a variety of nonanalytic traveling wave solutions, for instance, peakons, cuspons, compactons, kinks, and kink-compactons.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we analyze the bifurcation sets and phase portraits of corresponding traveling wave system. In Section 3, we classify single peak soliton solutions of (10) and give the parametric representations of the smooth soliton solutions, peakon-like solutions, cuspon solutions, and peakon solutions. In Section 4, we obtain the kink wave and kink compacton solutions of (10). A short conclusion is given in Section 5.

2. Bifurcation Sets and Phase Portraits

In this section, we shall study all possible bifurcations and phase portraits of the vector fields defined by (10) in the parameter space. To achieve such a goal, let with be the solution of (10), then it follows that

where , , and . Integrating (11) once and setting the integration constant as , we have

Clearly, (12) is equivalent to the planar system

where , , , and (). System (13) has the first integral

Obviously, for , system (13) is a singular traveling wave system [14]. Such a system may possess complicated dynamical behavior and thus generate many new traveling wave solutions. Hence, we assume in the rest of this paper (, ). The phase portraits defined by the vector fields of system (13) determine all possible traveling wave solutions of (10). However, it is not convenient to directly investigate (13) since there exist two singular straight lines and on the right-hand side of the second equation of (13). To avoid the singular lines temporarily, we define a new independent variable by setting ; then, system (13) is changed to a Hamiltonian system, written as

System (15) has the same topological phase portraits as system (13) except for the singular lines and .

We now investigate the bifurcation of phase portraits of the system (15). Denote that

Let be the coefficient matrix of the linearized system of (15) at the equilibrium point ; then,

and at this equilibrium point, we have

By the theory of planar dynamical systems, for an equilibrium point of a Hamiltonian system, if , then it is a saddle point, a center point if , and a degenerate equilibrium point if .

From the above analysis, we can obtain the bifurcation curves and phase portraits under different parameter conditions.

Let

Clearly, for , the function has three real roots , , and (); that is, system (15) has three equilibrium points , on the -axis. When , (15) has two equilibrium points on the straight line , where . When , system (15) has two equilibrium points on the straight line , where . Notice that on making the transformation , , , system (15) is invariant. This means that, for , the phase portraits of (15) are just the reflections of the corresponding phase portraits of (15) in the case with respect to the -axis. Thus, we only need to consider the case . To know the dynamical behavior of the orbits of system (15), we will discuss two cases: and .

2.1. Case I:

Lemma 1. Suppose that . Denote , , and , .
(1) For and , there exists one and only one curve on the -plane on which ; for and , there exists one and only one curve on the -plane on which or . Moreover, the curves , , , and are tangent at the point . The curve intersects with the curves , , and at the points , , and   , respectively.
(2) For , there exists a bifurcation point on -plane on which when , when , and when .

According to the above analysis and Lemma 1, we obtain the following proposition on the bifurcation curves of the phase portraits of system (15) for .

Proposition 2. When , for system (15), in -parameter plane, there exist five bifurcation curves (see Figure 1):

These five curves divide the right-half -parameter plane into thirty-one regions as follows:

  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  .

Figure 1: The bifurcation curves in the -parameter plane for .

In this case, the phase portraits of system (15) can be shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The bifurcation of phase portraits of system (15) when and .

2.2. Case II:

In this case, we have the following.

Proposition 3. When , for system (15), in -parameter plane, there exist four parametric bifurcation curves (see Figure 3):

These four curves divide the right-half -parameter plane into twenty-two regions:

  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  .

Figure 3: The bifurcation curves in the -parameter plane for .

Based on Proposition 3, we obtain the phase portraits of system (15) which are shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: The bifurcation of phase portraits of system (15) when and .

3. Single Peak Soliton Solutions

In this section, we study classification of single peak soliton solutions of (10) by using the phase portraits given in Section 2. Let denote the set of all times continuously differentiable functions on the open set . refer to the set of all functions whose restriction on any compact subset is integrable. stands for .

To study single peak soliton solutions, we impose the boundary condition

where is a constant. In fact, the constant is equal to the horizontal coordinate of saddle point . Substituting the boundary condition (22) into (14) generates the following constant:

So the ODE (14) becomes

If , then (24) reduces to

where

From (26) we know that if and if .

Definition 4. A function is said to be a single peak soliton solution for the equation (10) if satisfies the following conditions:

() is continuous on and has a unique peak point , where attains its global maximum or minimum value.() satisfies (24) on .() satisfies the boundary condition (22).

Definition 5. A wave function is called smooth soliton solution if is smooth locally on either side of and .

Definition 6. A wave function is called peakon if is smooth locally on either side of and , , .

Definition 7. A wave function is called cuspon if is smooth locally on either side of and .

Without any loss of generality, we choose the peak point as vanishing, .

Theorem 8. Assume that is a single peak soliton solution of the equation (10) at the peak point . Then, we have the following:

(i)If , then or .(ii)If , then or or or .

Proof. If , then for any since . Differentiating both sides of (24) yields .
(i) When , if and , then . By the definition of single peak soliton we have . However, by (24) we must have , which contradicts the fact that is the unique peak point.
(ii) When , if and , by (24) we know exists and since is a peak point. Thus, we obtain or from (25), since contradicts the fact that 0 is the unique peak point.

Now we give the following theorem on the classification of single peak solitons of (10). The idea is inspired by the study of the traveling waves of Camassa-Holm equation [18, 19].

Theorem 9. Assume that is a single peak soliton solution of the equation (10) at the peak point . Then, we have the following solution classification:
(i) If , then , and is a smooth soliton solution.
(ii) If , then is a cuspon solution and has the following asymptotic behavior:

where . Thus, .
(iii) If , then is a cuspon solution and has the following asymptotic behavior:

where . Thus, .
(iv) If and , then is a peakon-like solution and

where .
(v) If and , then is a peakon-like solution and

where .
(vi) If and , then gives the peakon solution .
(vii) If and , then gives the peakon solution .

Proof. (vi) and (vii) are obvious. Let us prove (i), (ii), and (iv) in order.
(i) From the process of proofing of Theorem 8, we know that if , then and is a smooth soliton solution.
(ii) If , then by the definition of single peak soliton we have ; thus, does not contain the factor . From (24), we obtain

Let ; then, , and

Inserting into (32) and using the initial condition , we obtain

thus,

which implies . Therefore, we have

So, .
(iii) Similar to the proof of (ii), we ignore it in this paper.
(iv) If and , then from (25) we obtain

Let ; then, and

Inserting into (37) and using the initial condition , we obtain

Since

we get

which implies . Therefore, we have

where .
(v) Similar to the proof of (iv), we ignore it in this paper.

By virtue of Theorem 9, any single peak soliton for the equation (10) must satisfy the following initial and boundary values problem:

and the boundary condition (24) imply the following:

(a)If , then or .(b)If , then .

Below, we will present some implicit formulas for the single peak soliton solutions in the case of specific and .

Case 1 (). In this case, we have . From the standard phase analysis and Theorem 9 we know that if is a single peak soliton of the equation, then

From the separation of variables we get

where . After a lengthy calculation of integral, we obtain the implicit solution defined by

where

and is an arbitrary integration constant. For , the constant is defined by

and for ,

(i) If , then . Since , we know that strictly decreases on the interval ; thus, gives a single peak soliton with and . Therefore, is the solution satisfying

So, is a peakon-like solution (see Figure 5).

(a)

(b)

Figure 5: Two- and three-dimensional graphs of the peakon-like solution.

(ii) If , then . By , we know that strictly increases on the interval . Thus,

has the inverse denoted by . gives a kind of smooth soliton solution (see Figure 6) satisfying

(a)

(b)

Figure 6: Two- and three-dimensional graphs of the smooth soliton solution.

Case 2 (). In this case, we have and (25) is equivalent to

Let

then, (52) is converted to

Integrating (54) on the interval (or ) leads to the following implicit solutions:

where

And is an arbitrary integration constant. It is obvious that, for , the constant is defined by

and for ,

(i) If , then . From , we know that strictly decreases on the interval with and . Define

Since is a strictly decreasing function from onto , we can solve for uniquely from (59) and obtain

It is easy to check that satisfies

Therefore, the solution defined by (60) is a cuspon solution for the equation (see Figure 7).
(ii) If , then . Through a similar analysis, we get a strictly increasing function on the interval satisfying

where is defined by (55). Let

then is a strictly increasing function from onto so that we can solve for and obtain

It is easy to check that satisfies

Therefore, the solution defined by (64) is a peakon-like solution, whose graph is similar to those in Figure 5.

(a)

(b)

Figure 7: Two- and three-dimensional graphs of the cuspon solution.

Case 3 (). In this case, we have , , and

Hence from the separation of variables we have

Integrating (67) on the interval (or ) leads to the following implicit formula for the two smooth soliton solutions:

where . Consider

where .

Case 4 (). In this case, we have , and

Choosing (or ) as initial value, we get

which immediately yield the peakon solutions

The graphs for the peakon solution (72) are shown in Figure 8.

(a)

(b)

Figure 8: Two- and three-dimensional graphs of the peakon solution.

Remark 10. The classical peakon solution (72) and peakon-like solution (64) admit left-half derivative and right-half derivative at their crest. But the signs of the left-half derivative and right-half derivative are opposite, so the peakon and peakon-like solutions admit the discontinuous first order derivative at their crest. In comparison with classical peakon solution (72), the expression of the peakon-like solution (64) is more complex. Moreover, by observing Figures 2(14) and 2(17) we find that the phase orbits of the peakon consist of three straight lines, but the phase orbits of the peakon-like consist of two curves and a straight line. Therefore, we call the soliton solution (64) the peakon-like solution.

4. Kink Wave and Kink Compacton Solutions

We now turn our attention to the kink wave solutions of the equation (10). In order to study kink wave solutions, we assume that

where . Substituting the boundary condition (73) into (14) generates

The nonlinear differential equation (74) may sustain different kinds of nonlinear excitations. In what follows, we confine our attention to the cases and which describe kinks and kink compactons which play an important role in the dynamics systems. Under these considerations, (74) reduces to

If , then from the phase analysis in Section 2 (see Figure 4(10)), we know that and are two saddle points of (13) and the kink solutions can be obtained from the two heteroclinic orbits connecting and . When increases upon reaching , that is , (75) becomes

and the ellipse (see Figure 4(11)), which is tangent to the singular lines and at points and , respectively, gives rise to two kink compactons of (10).

We next explore the qualitative behavior of kink wave solutions to (75) and (76). If is a kink wave solutions of (75) or (76), we have as and as . Moreover, we have for and is strictly monotonic in any interval where . Thus, if at some points, will be strictly increasing until it gets close to the next zero of . Denoting this zero , we have . What will happen to the solution when it approaches ? Depending on whether the zero is double or simple, has a different behavior. We explore the two cases in turn.

Theorem 11. (i) If has a simple zero at , so that and , then the solution of (75) satisfies

where .
(ii) When approaches the double zero of so that and , then the solution of (75) satisfies

for some constant . Thus, exponentially as .

Proof. (i) When and , from (76), has a simple zero at . Then,

Using the fact that , we know that . Moreover,

Because

we obtain

Integrating (82) yields

where satisfies . Thus,

which implies . Therefore, we get

where .
(ii) When and , from (75), has a double zero at . Then,

Furthermore, we get

Observing that

we obtain

By a similar computation as the one that leads to (85), we arrive at (78). This completes the proof of Theorem 11.

Next we try to find the exact formulas for the kink wave solutions. Let and . Then, (75) becomes

Integrating both sides of (90) gives the following implicit expressions of kink and antikink wave solutions:

By letting in (91), we get two kink compactons which are given by

The graphs for the kink wave solutions (91) and kink compacton solutions (92) are shown in Figures 9 and 10, respectively.

(a)

(b)

Figure 9: Two- and three-dimensional graphs of the kink wave solution.

(a)

(b)

Figure 10: Two- and three-dimensional graphs of the kink compacton solution.

Remark 12. The two kink compacton solutions (92) are different from the well-known smooth kink wave solutions. In comparison with kink wave solutions (91), the kink compacton solutions (92) have no exponential decay properties but have compact support. That is, they minus a constant, the differences identically vanish outside a finite core region.

5. Conclusion

In this paper, we investigate the traveling wave solutions of the equation (10). We show that (10) can be reduced to a planar polynomial differential system by transformation of variables. We treat the planar polynomial differential system by the dynamical systems theory and present a phase space analysis of their singular points. Two singular straight lines are found in the associated topological vector field. The influence of parameters as well as the singular lines on the smoothness property of the traveling wave solutions is explored in detail.

Because any traveling wave solution of (10) is determined from Newton’s equation which we write in the form , where , we solve Newton’s equation for single peak soliton solutions and kink wave and kink compacton solutions. We classify all single peak soliton solutions of (10). Then peakon, peakon-like, cuspon, smooth soliton solutions of the generalized Camassa-Holm equation (10) are obtained. The parametric conditions of existence of the single peak soliton solutions are given by using the phase portrait analytical technique. Asymptotic analysis and numerical simulations are provided for single peak soliton and kink wave and kink compacton solutions of the equation.

Actually, for , in equation (9), the dynamical behavior of traveling wave solutions of (9) is similar to the case ; for , in equation (9), the dynamical behavior of traveling wave solutions of (9) is similar to the case . We are applying the approach mentioned in this work to equation (9) and already get some new solutions, which we will report in another paper.

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 11326131 and no. 61473332) and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant nos. LQ14A010009 and LY13A010005.

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