Equilibrium schemes for scalar conservation laws with stiff sources

We consider a simple model case of stiff source terms in hyperbolic conservation laws, namely, the case of scalar conservation laws with a zeroth order source with low regularity. It is well known that a direct treatment of the source term by finite volume schemes gives unsatisfactory results for both the reduced CFL condition and refined meshes required because of the lack of accuracy on equilibrium states. The source term should be taken into account in the upwinding and discretized at the nodes of the grid. In order to solve numerically the problem, we introduce a so-called equilibrium schemes with the properties that (i) the maximum principle holds true; (ii) discrete entropy inequalities are satisfied; (iii) steady state solutions of the problem are maintained. One of the difficulties in studying the convergence is that there are no estimates for this problem. We therefore introduce a kinetic interpretation of upwinding taking into account the source terms. Based on the kinetic formulation we give a new convergence proof that only uses property (ii) in order to ensure desired compactness framework for a family of approximate solutions and that relies on minimal assumptions. The computational efficiency of our equilibrium schemes is demonstrated by numerical tests that show that, in comparison with an usual upwind scheme, the corresponding equilibrium version is far more accurate. Furthermore, numerical computations show that equilibrium schemes enable us to treat efficiently the sources with singularities and oscillating coefficients.