In this study, we establish exact solutions of fractional Kawahara equation by using the idea of $$\exp \,\left( { - \varphi \left( \eta \right)} \right)$$ exp - φ η -expansion method. The results of different studies show that the method is very effective and can be used as an alternative for finding exact solutions of nonlinear evolution equations (NLEEs) in mathematical physics. The solitary wave solutions are expressed by the hyperbolic, trigonometric, exponential and rational functions. Graphical representations along with the numerical data reinforce the efficacy of the used procedure. The specified idea is very effective, expedient for fractional PDEs, and could be extended to other physical problems.

We use the fractional derivatives in Caputo’s sense to construct exact solutions to fractional fifth order nonlinear evolution equations. A generalized fractional complex transform is appropriately used to convert this equation to ordinary differential equation which subsequently resulted in a number of exact solutions.