On a kinetic model for shallow water waves

The system of shallow water waves is one of the classical examples for non-linear, two-dimensional conservation laws. The paper investigates a simple kinetic equation depending on a parameter ? which leads for ? → 0 to the system of shallow water waves. The corresponding ‘equilibrium’ distribution function has a compact support which depends on the eigenvalues of the hyperbolic system. It is shown that this kind of kinetic approach is restricted to a special class of non-linear conservation laws. The kinetic model is used to develop a simple particle method for the numerical solution of shallow water waves. The particle method can be implemented in a straightforward way and produces in test examples sufficiently accurate results.