CONVERGENCE OF THE LAX-FRIEDRICHS SCHEME AND STABILITY FOR CONSERVATION LAWS WITH A DISCONTINUOUS SPACE-TIME DEPENDENT FLUX

The authors give the first convergence proof for the Lax-Friedrichs finite differencescheme for non-convex genuinely nonlinear scalar conservation laws of the formu_t f(k(x, t), u)_x = 0,where the coefficient k(x, t) is allowed to be discontinuous along curves in the (x, t)plane. In contrast to most of the existing literature on problems with discontinuouscoefficients, here the convergence proof is not based on the singular mapping approach,but rather on the div-curl lemma (but not the Young measure) and a Lax type en-tropy estimate that is robust with respect to the regularity of k(x, t). Following 14],the authors propose a definition of entropy solution that extends the classical Kruzkovdefinition to the situation where k(x, t) is piecewise Lipschitz continuous in the (x, t)plane, and prove the stability (uniqueness) of such entropy solutions, provided that theflux function satisfies a so-called crossng condition, and that strong traces of the solu-tion exist along the curves where k(x, t) is disco

CONVERGENCE OF THE LAX-FRIEDRICHS SCHEME AND STABILITY FOR CONSERVATION LAWS WITH A DISCONTINUOUS SPACE-TIME DEPENDENT FLUX

The authors give the first convergence proof for the Lax-Friedrichs finite difference scheme for non-convex genuinely nonlinear scalar conservation laws of the form u_t f(k(x, t), u)_x = 0, where the coefficient k(x, t) is allowed to be discontinuous along curves in the (x, t) plane. In contrast to most of the existing literature on problems with discontinuous coefficients, here the convergence proof is not based on the singular mapping approach, but rather on the div-curl lemma (but not the Young measure) and a Lax type en- tropy estimate that is robust with respect to the regularity of k(x, t). Following 14], the authors propose a definition of entropy solution that extends the classical Kruzkov definition to the situation where k(x, t) is piecewise Lipschitz continuous in the (x, t) plane, and prove the stability (uniqueness) of such entropy solutions, provided that the flux function satisfies a so-called crossng condition, and that strong traces of the solu- tion exist along the curves where k(x, t) is discontinuous. It is shown that a convergent subsequence of approximations produced by the Lax-Friedrichs scheme converges to such an entropy solution, implying that the entire computed sequence converges.