70976

General solution

The generał solution contains forward and reverse travelling waves of arbitrary shape, and has the form

It may easily be confirmed that this solution satisfies equation 2.7 when the pa ram eter

c, which has the significance of the velocity of the wave in either the forward or backward

direction, has the value

The generał solution can be seen to be a linear combination of independent waves Vf and Vrtravelling in the forward and backward directions resepctively. The velocities of the forward and backward waves are equal. The shapes of the forward and backward waves can in the generał case be quite arbitrary and independent.