Admissibility of difference approximations for scalar conservation laws (Q1261767)

The difference schemes for scalar conservation laws are investigated in context of entropy consistency when solving initial value problems. The notion of admissibility is introduced for those difference approximations which are stable and satisfy the Lax entropy inequality, corresponding numerical solutions being convergent to physically relevant exact solutions. The admissibility is investigated in terms of numerical viscosity coefficients. For general flux function, the property of strong admissibility is considered which means in particular that the numerical entropy condition is met for any entropy pair. It has been proved that difference approximation is strongly admissible provided that certain inequality for numerical viscosity holds. In the case of convex flux function, the main result is concerned with the difference approximations which possess small numerical viscosity. In this case, the admissibility of schemes means that entropy condition is satisfied for some entropy pair. It has been shown that a small amount of numerical viscosity should be added to entropy-inconsistent schemes to make them admissible.