Bharuthram, Ramesh.Lakshmi, Vidhya S.2014-11-192014-11-1919951995http://hdl.handle.net/10413/11592Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1995.This thesis is concerned with the some aspects of electrostatic wave phenomena dusty plasmas. In particular Debye shielding, nonlinear potential structures such as diploar vortices and solitons are investigated. The phenomenon of Debye shielding is investigated in a dusty plasma where electrons and ions have Boltzmann density distributions and the massive, negatively charged dust grains are taken to be stationary. Small and large amplitude electrostatic potentials are considered. The existence of nonlinear dipolar-vortex and modified convective cell structures are examined in an inhomogeneous magnetized dusty plasma. A study is carried out on arbitrary amplitude rarefactive and compressive solitons in dusty plasmas. Using the reductive perturbation technique, the kinetic Korteweg-de Vries equation and the corresponding equation for fluid theory is derived. The investigation is done on weak (or small amplitude) solitons. Comparisons between the associated soliton profiles are presented.en-ZAElectrostatics.Physics--ResearchThesis