A note on the effect of artificial viscosity on solutions of conservation laws (Q1924830)

Numerical methods for nonlinear hyperbolic systems of \(n\) equations of the form \(u_t+f(u)_x=0\), where \(f\) is a convex function, are considered. The main study concerns the influence of artificial viscosity (an additional term added to the right hand side) on the discrete solutions of hyperbolic problems by employing linearization around states on each side of a shock. In one space dimension by using central differences (which leads to a first-order upwind method), it is found that the smallest possible viscosity that suppresses wiggles is proportional to the local characteristic speed and to the gridsize. Both stationary and moving shocks are considered. It is shown also that for the gas dynamic (Euler) equations sharp shock layers can be obtained when a scalar viscosity coefficient is used. This does not hold for systems, in general, since a scalar viscosity coefficient can provide good results if the characteristic speeds are of the same magnitude. Examples of numerical computations of solutions for Burgers' equation and the Euler equations using the semi-discrete approximations are given.