Symbolic computation in engineering: Application to a breaking soliton equation

The application of symbolic computation to nonlinear evolution equations is likely to become of practical value in engineering sciences. Illustrated in this paper is a typical (2 + 1)-dimensional breaking soliton equation, whose new families of soliton-like solutions are found via the generalized tanh method, including the overturning soliton solutions. Examples are given, and solitary waves are shown to be a simple case.