Solitary waves travelling along an elastic plate present between two fluids with different densities are computed in this paper. Different two-dimensional configurations are considered: the upper fluid can be of infinite extent, bounded by a rigid wall or under a second elastic plate. The dispersion relation is obtained for each case and numerical codes based on integro-differential formulations for the full nonlinear problem are derived. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Nonlinear water waves’.