Open Access

Among the various types of guided acoustic waves, acoustic wedge waves are non-diffractive and non-dispersive. Both properties make them susceptible to nonlinear effects. Investigations have recently been focused on effects of second-order nonlinearity in connection with anisotropy. The current status of these investigations is reviewed in the context of earlier work on nonlinear properties of two-dimensional guided acoustic waves, in particular surface waves. The role of weak dispersion, leading to solitary waves, is also discussed. For anti-symmetric flexural wedge waves propagating in isotropic media or in anisotropic media with reflection symmetry with respect to the wedge’s mid-plane, an evolution equation is derived that accounts for an effective third-order nonlinearity of acoustic wedge waves. For the kernel functions occurring in the nonlinear terms of this equation, expressions in terms of overlap integrals with Laguerre functions are provided, which allow for their quantitative numerical evaluation. First numerical results for the efficiency of third-harmonic generation of flexural wedge waves are presented.