On the irrotational approximation to steady supersonic flow

Under the hypothesis that the initial perturbation has small BV norm, we prove that in any bounded domain the L¹ norm of the difference between solutions to the isentropic Euler system of steady supersonic flow and the system of steady irrotational supersonic flow with the same initial data can be bounded by the cube of the total variation of the initial perturbation.     

Analysis on linear stability of oblique shock waves in steady supersonic flow

An attached oblique shock wave is generated when a sharp solid projectile flies supersonically in the air. We study the linear stability of oblique shock waves in steady supersonic flow under three dimensional perturbation in the incoming flow. Euler system of equations for isentropic gas model is used. The linear stability is established for shock front with supersonic downstream flow, in addition to the usual entropy condition.     

Well-posedness for two-dimensional steady supersonic Euler flows past a Lipschitz wedge

For a supersonic Euler flow past a straight-sided wedge whose vertex angle is less than the extreme angle, there exists a shock-front emanating from the wedge vertex, and the shock-front is usually strong especially when the vertex angle of the wedge is large. In this paper, we establish the L¹ well-posedness for two-dimensional steady supersonic Euler flows past a Lipschitz wedge whose boundary slope function has small total variation, when the total variation of the incoming flow is small. In this case, the Lipschitz wedge perturbs the flow, and the waves reflect after interacting with the strong shock-front and the wedge boundary. We first obtain the existence of solutions in BV when the incoming flow has small total variation by the wave front tracking method and then establish the L¹ stability of the solutions with respect to the incoming flows. In particular, we incorporate the nonlinear waves generated from the wedge boundary to develop a Lyapunov functional between two solutions containing strong shock-fronts, which is equivalent to the L¹ norm, and prove that the functional decreases in the flow direction. Then the L¹ stability is established, so is the uniqueness of the solutions by the wave front tracking method. Finally, the uniqueness of solutions in a broader class, the class of viscosity solutions, is also obtained.     

Irrotational approximation to the quasi-1-d gas flow

Under the assumptions that both initial data and the cross-section have sufficiently small total variation and that the initial data are supersonic (or are subsonic respectively), we prove that in any bounded domain the L¹ norm of the difference between solutions of the hyperbolic system of balance laws and the potential flow system of balance laws with the same initial data can be bounded by the cube of the sum over total variations of the initial data and the cross-section.     

Inhomogeneous Navier–Stokes equations in the half-space,with only bounded density

In this paper, we establish the global existence and uniqueness of solutions to the inhomogeneous Navier–Stokes system in the half-space. The initial density only has to be bounded and close enough to a positive constant, the initial velocity belongs to some critical Besov space, and the L^∞$L^{\infty }$ norm of the inhomogeneity plus the critical norm to the horizontal components of the initial velocity has to be very small compared to the exponential of the norm to the vertical component of the initial velocity. With a little bit more regularity for the initial velocity, those solutions are proved to be unique. In the last section of the paper, our results are partially extended to the bounded domain case.     

Global transonic conic shock wave for the symmetrically perturbed supersonic flow past a cone

In this paper, we are concerned with the global existence and stability of a steady transonic conic shock wave for the symmetrically perturbed supersonic flow past an infinitely long conic body. The flow is assumed to be polytropic, isentropic and described by a steady potential equation. Theoretically, as indicated in [R. Courant, K.O. Friedrichs, Supersonic Flow and Shock Waves, Interscience Publishers, Inc., New York, 1948], it follows from the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions and the entropy condition that there will appear a weak shock or a strong shock attached at the vertex of the sharp cone in terms of the different pressure states at infinity behind the shock surface, which correspond to the supersonic shock and the transonic shock respectively. In the references [Shuxing Chen, Zhouping Xin, Huicheng Yin, Global shock wave for the supersonic flow past a perturbed cone, Comm. Math. Phys. 228 (2002) 47-84; Dacheng Cui, Huicheng Yin, Global conic shock wave for the steady supersonic flow past a cone: Polytropic case, preprint, 2006; Dacheng Cui, Huicheng Yin, Global conic shock wave for the steady supersonic flow past a cone: Isothermal case, Pacific J. Math. 233 (2) (2007) 257-289] and [Zhouping Xin, Huicheng Yin, Global multidimensional shock wave for the steady supersonic flow past a three-dimensional curved cone, Anal. Appl. 4 (2) (2006) 101-132], the authors have established the global existence and stability of a supersonic shock for the perturbed hypersonic incoming flow past a sharp cone when the pressure at infinity is appropriately smaller than that of the incoming flow. At present, for the supersonic symmetric incoming flow, we will study the global transonic shock problem when the pressure at infinity is appropriately large.     

Global supersonic conic shock wave for the steady supersonic flow past a cone: Polytropic gas

In this paper, we establish the global existence and stability of a steady conic shock wave for the symmetrically perturbed supersonic flow past an infinitely long conic body as long as the vertex angle is less than a critical value. The flow is assumed to be polytropic, isentropic and described by a steady potential equation. Based on the delicate asymptotic expansion of the background solution, one can verify that the boundary conditions on the shock and the conic surface satisfy the “dissipative” property. From this property, by use of the reflected characteristics method and the special form of the shock equation, we show that the conic shock attached at the vertex of the cone exists globally in the whole space when the speed of the supersonic coming flow is appropriately large. On the other hand, we remove the smallness restriction on the sharp vertex angle in order to establish the global existence of a shock or a global weak solution, moreover, our proof approach is different from that in [Shuxing Chen, Zhouping Xin, Huicheng Yin, Global shock wave for the supersonic flow past a perturbed cone, Comm. Math. Phys. 228 (2002) 47-84] and [Zhouping Xin, Huicheng Yin, Global multidimensional shock wave for the steady supersonic flow past a three-dimensional curved cone, Anal. Appl. 4 (2) (2006) 101-132].     

Finite element methods on piecewise equidistant meshes for interior turning point problems

We consider linear second order singularly perturbed two-point boundary value problems with interior turning points. Piecewise linear Galerkin finite element methods are constructed on various piecewise equidistant meshes designed for such problems. These methods are proved to be convergent, uniformly in the singular perturbation parameter, in a weighted energy norm and the usualL ² norm. Supporting numerical results are presented.     

A direct construction of very smooth local Navier-Stokes solutions

We will consider Galerkin approximations to the solution of the Navier-Stokes initial boundary-value problem in three dimensions. Uniform convergence (locally in time) will be proved with respect to the same norm (being stronger than theH ²-norm) in which the solution's initial value is bounded. The result is the best possible if we will avoid a nonlinear, nonlocal compatibility condition for the initial value.Dedicated to Professor Robert Finn on the occasion of his 70th birthday     

A note on the asymptotic behavior of global classical solutions of diagonalizable quasilinear hyperbolic systems

This paper is concerned with the asymptotic behavior of global classical solutions of diagonalizable quasilinear hyperbolic systems with linearly degenerate characteristic fields. On the basis of the existence result for the global classical solution, we prove that when t tends to the infinity, the solution approaches a combination of C¹ traveling wave solutions, provided that the C¹ norm and the BV norm of the initial data are bounded but possibly large. In contrast to former results obtained by Liu and Zhou [J. Liu, Y. Zhou, Asymptotic behaviour of global classical solutions of diagonalizable quasilinear hyperbolic systems, Math. Methods Appl. Sci. 30 (2007) 479-500], ours do not require their assumption that the system is rich in the sense of Serre. Applications include that to the one-dimensional Born-Infeld system arising in string theory and high energy physics.     

Stability of Riemann solutions with large oscillation for the relativistic Euler equations

We are concerned with entropy solutions of the 2×2 relativistic Euler equations for perfect fluids in special relativity. We establish the uniqueness of Riemann solutions in the class of entropy solutions in L^∞∩BV_loc with arbitrarily large oscillation. Our proof for solutions with large oscillation is based on a detailed analysis of global behavior of shock curves in the phase space and on special features of centered rarefaction waves in the physical plane for this system. The uniqueness result does not require specific reference to any particular method for constructing the entropy solutions. Then the uniqueness of Riemann solutions yields their inviscid large-time stability under arbitrarily largeL¹∩L^∞∩BV_loc perturbation of the Riemann initial data, as long as the corresponding solutions are in L^∞ and have local bounded total variation that allows the linear growth in time. We also extend our approach to deal with the uniqueness and stability of Riemann solutions containing vacuum in the class of entropy solutions in L^∞ with arbitrarily large oscillation.     

On transonic shocks in a conic divergent nozzle with axi-symmetric exit pressures

In this paper, we establish the existence and stability of a 3-D transonic shock solution to the full steady compressible Euler system in a class of de Laval nozzles with a conic divergent part when a given variable axi-symmetric exit pressure lies in a suitable scope. Thus, for this class of nozzles, we have solved such a transonic shock problem in the axi-symmetric case described by Courant and Friedrichs (1948) in Section 147 of [8]: Given the appropriately large exit pressure pe(x), if the upstream flow is still supersonic behind the throat of the nozzle, then at a certain place in the diverging part of the nozzle a shock front intervenes and the gas is compressed and slowed down to subsonic speed so that the position and the strength of the shock front are automatically adjusted such that the end pressure at the exit becomes pe(x).     

Unique solvability of equations of motion for ferrofluids

We study the differential system governing the flow of an incompressible ferrofluid under the action of a magnetic field. The system is a combination of the Navier-Stokes equations, the angular momentum equation, the magnetization equation and the magnetostatic equations. No regularizing term is added to the magnetization equation. We prove the local-in-time existence of the unique strong solution to the system posed in a bounded domain of R³ and equipped with initial and boundary conditions.     

On the isentropic approximation to two-dimension isothermal Euler system

In this paper we mainly study the difference between the weak solutions generated by a wave front tracking algorithm to isentropic and non-isentropic isothermal Euler system of steady supersonic flow. Under the hypothesis that the initial data are of sufficiently small total variation, we prove that the difference between solutions to isentropic and non-isentropic isothermal Euler system of steady supersonic flow can be bounded by the cube of the total variation of the initial perturbation.     

Stability of steady multi-wave configurations for the full Euler equations of compressible fluid flow

We are concerned with the stability of steady multi-wave configurations for the full Euler equations of compressible fluid flow. In this paper, we focus on the stability of steady four-wave configurations that are the solutions of the Riemann problem in the flow direction, consisting of two shocks, one vortex sheet, and one entropy wave, which is one of the core multi-wave configurations for the two-dimensional Euler equations. It is proved that such steady four-wave configurations in supersonic flow are stable in structure globally, even under the BV perturbation of the incoming flow in the flow direction. In order to achieve this, we first formulate the problem as the Cauchy problem (initial value problem) in the flow direction, and then develop a modified Glimm difference scheme and identify a Glimm-type functional to obtain the required BV estimates by tracing the interactions not only between the strong shocks and weak waves, but also between the strong vortex sheet/entropy wave and weak waves. The key feature of the Euler equations is that the reflection coefficient is always less than $1$, when a weak wave of different family interacts with the strong vortex sheet/entropy wave or the shock wave, which is crucial to guarantee that the Glimm functional is decreasing. Then these estimates are employed to establish the convergence of the approximate solutions to a global entropy solution, close to the background solution of steady four-wave configuration.     

THE VORTEX BLOB METHOD AS A SECOND-GRADE NON-NEWTONIAN FLUID

We show that a certain class of vortex blob approximations for ideal hydrodynamics in two dimensions can be rigorously understood as solutions to the equations of second-grade non-Newtonian fluids with zero viscosity and initial data in the space of Radon measures M (R ²). The solutions of this regularized PDE, also known as the isotropic Lagrangian averaged Euler or Euler-α equations, are geodesics on the volume preserving diffeomorphism group with respect to a new weak right invariant metric. We prove global existence of unique weak solutions (geodesics) for initial vorticity in M (R ²) such as point-vortex data, and show that the associated coadjoint orbit is preserved by the flow. Moreover, solutions of this particular vortex blob method converge to solutions of the Euler equations with bounded initial vorticity, provided that the initial data is approximated weakly in measure, and the total variation of the approximation also converges. In particular, this includes grid-based approximation schemes as are common in practical vortex computations.     

On blow-up criteria of smooth solutions to the 3-D Euler equations in a bounded domain

We show that a smooth solution of the 3-D Euler equations in a bounded domain breaks down, if and only if a certain norm of vorticity blows up at the same time. Here this norm is weaker than bmo-norm.     

Irrotational approximation to the one-dimensional bipolar Euler–Poisson system

Under the assumptions that initial data have sufficiently small total variation and that the initial data are supersonic (or are subsonic respectively), we prove that in any bounded domain the L¹$L^1$ norm of the difference between the local solutions of the one-dimensional bipolar Euler–Poisson system and the potential flow system of the one-dimensional bipolar Euler–Poisson system with the same initial data can be bounded by the cube of the total variation of the initial data.     

On global transonic shocks for the steady supersonic Euler flows past sharp 2-D wedges

In this paper, under certain downstream pressure condition at infinity, we study the globally stable transonic shock problem for the perturbed steady supersonic Euler flow past an infinitely long 2-D wedge with a sharp angle. As described in the book of Courant and Friedrichs [R. Courant, K.O. Friedrichs, Supersonic Flow and Shock Waves, Interscience, New York, 1948] (pages 317-318): when a supersonic flow hits a sharp wedge, it follows from the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions and the entropy condition that there will appear a weak shock or a strong shock attached at the edge of the sharp wedge in terms of the different pressure states in the downstream region, which correspond to the supersonic shock and the transonic shock respectively. It has frequently been stated that the strong shock is unstable and that, therefore, only the weak shock could occur. However, a convincing proof of this instability has apparently never been given. The aim of this paper is to understand this open problem. More concretely, we will establish the global existence and stability of a transonic shock solution for 2-D full Euler system when the downstream pressure at infinity is suitably given. Meanwhile, the asymptotic state of the downstream subsonic solution is determined.