Abstract: | We present a new relaxation method for the numerical approximation of the two‐dimensional Riemann problems in gas dynamics. The novel feature of the technique proposed here is that it does not require either a Riemann solver or a characteristics decomposition. The high resolution of the method is achieved by using a third‐order reconstruction for the space discretization and a third‐order TVD Runge‐Kutta scheme for the time integration. Numerical experiments, using several configurations of Riemann problems in gas dynamics, are included to confirm the high resolution of the new relaxation scheme. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2006 |