Central ADER schemes for hyperbolic conservation laws

In this paper we first briefly review the very high order ADER methods for solving hyperbolic conservation laws. ADER methods use high order polynomial reconstruction of the solution and upwind fluxes as the building block. They use a first order upwind Godunov and the upwind second order weighted average (WAF) fluxes. As well known the upwind methods are more accurate than central schemes. However, the superior accuracy of the ADER upwind schemes comes at a cost, one must solve exactly or approximately the Riemann problems (RP). Conventional Riemann solvers are usually complex and are not available for many hyperbolic problems of practical interest. In this paper we propose to use two central fluxes, instead of upwind fluxes, as the building block in ADER scheme. These are the monotone first order Lax-Friedrich (LXF) and the third order TVD flux. The resulting schemes are called central ADER schemes. Accuracy of the new schemes is established. Numerical implementations of the new schemes are carried out on the scalar conservation laws with a linear flux, nonlinear convex flux and non-convex flux. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme, with LXF flux, is comparable to those using first and second order upwind fluxes while the scheme, with third order TVD flux, is superior to those using upwind fluxes. When compared with the state of art ADER schemes, our central ADER schemes are faster, more accurate, Riemann solver free, very simple to implement and need less computer memory. A way to extend these schemes to general systems of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws in one and two dimensions is presented.