On the Nonuniqueness of Solutions to the Nonlinear Equations of Elasticity Theory

One-dimensional selfsimilar problems for waves in an elastic half-space generated by a sudden change of the boundary stress (the “piston” problem) and problems of disintegration of an arbitrary discontinuity are considered. For the case when small-amplitude waves are generated in a medium with small anisotropy a qualitative analysis shows that these problems have nonunique solutions when it is assumed that the solutions involve Riemann waves and evolutionary discontinuities. The above-mentioned problems are considered as limits of properly formulated problems for visco-elastic media when the viscosity tends to zero or (what is the same) that time tends to infinity. It is numerically found that all above-mentioned inviscid solutions can represent the asymptotics of visco-elastic solutions. The type of asymptotics depends on those details of the visco-elastic problem formulation which are absent when formulating inviscid selfsimilar problems. Similar considerations are made for elastic media with dispersion along with dissipation which are manifested in small-scale processes. In such media the number of available asymptotics (as t→∞) for the above-mentioned solutions depends on a relation between dispersion and dissipation and can be large. Thus, two possible causes for the nonuniqueness of solutions to the equations of elasticity theory are investigated.