Microstructure-induced dispersive operators in nonlinear dynamics of elastic bodies: two paradigmatic cases

Abstract Latent microstructures may affect the dynamics of elastic bodies by selecting dispersive components of the gross evolution operator. We examine this mechanism in a nonlinear one-dimensional setting in which an internal constraint links an active microstructural descriptor to the gross deformation. In the absence of relative microstructural inertia, the resulting strain-gradient contribution supports explicit homoclinic strain profiles. We study their persistence under periodic constitutive perturbations and derive explicit Melnikov functions and transversality conditions. When relative microstructural inertia is retained, it contributes directly to the dispersive operator through a velocity-dependent coefficient. This produces high-velocity saturation of both the characteristic spatial scale of the homoclinic profiles and their relative sensitivity to microinertial heterogeneity. The analysis shows how constitutive changes of a latent microstructure may alter not merely material coefficients but the dispersive structure governing nonlinear elastic dynamics and the persistence of its localized travelling waves.