Reduction and analytic solutions of a variable-coefficient Korteweg-de Vries equation in a fluid, crystal or plasma

In this paper, a variable-coefficient KdV equation in a fluid, plasma, anharmonic crystal, blood vessel, circulatory system, shallow-water tunnel, lake or relaxation inhomogeneous medium is discussed. We construct the reduction from the original equation to another variable-coefficient KdV equation, and then get the rational, periodic and mixed solutions of the original equation under certain constraint. For the original equation, we obtain that (i) the dispersive coefficient affects the solitonic background, velocity and amplitude; (ii) the perturbed coefficient affects the solitonic velocity, amplitude and background; (iii) the dissipative coefficient affects the solitonic background, and there are different mixed solutions under the same constraint with the dispersive, perturbed and dissipative coefficients changing.