Solitary Waves in Hyperelastic Tubes Conveying Inviscid and Viscous Fluid

We study possible steady states of an infinitely long tube made of a hyperelastic membrane and conveying either an inviscid, or a viscous fluid with power-law rheology. The tube model is geometrically and physically nonlinear; the fluid model is limited to smooth changes in the tube’s radius. For the inviscid case, we analyse the tube’s stretch and flow velocity range at which standing solitary waves of both the swelling and the necking type exist. For the viscous case, we show that a steady-state solution exists only for sufficiently small flow speeds and that it has a form of a kink wave; solitary waves do not exist. For the case of a semi-infinite tube (infinite either upstream or downstream), there exist both kink and solitary wave solutions. For finite-length tubes, there exist solutions of any kind, i.e. in the form of pieces of kink waves, solitary waves, and periodic waves.