  In the present study we prove rigorously that in the long-wave limit, the
unidirectional solutions of a class of nonlocal wave equations to which the
improved Boussinesq equation belongs are well approximated by the solutions of
the Camassa-Holm equation over a long time scale. This general class of
nonlocal wave equations model bidirectional wave propagation in a nonlocally
and nonlinearly elastic medium whose constitutive equation is given by a
convolution integral. To justify the Camassa-Holm approximation we show that
approximation errors remain small over a long time interval. To be more
precise, we obtain error estimates in terms of two independent, small, positive
parameters $\epsilon$ and $\delta$ measuring the effect of nonlinearity and
dispersion, respectively. We further show that similar conclusions are also
valid for the lower order approximations: the Benjamin-Bona-Mahony
approximation and the Korteweg-de Vries approximation.
