Energy relaxation approximation for compressible multicomponent flows in thermal nonequilibrium (Q2143155)

The authors introduce a general framework to design finite volume schemes for the compressible multicomponent Euler equations in thermal nonequilibrium. Such framework allows to define a numerical scheme for its discretization from a scheme for the discretization of the monocomponent polytropic gas dynamics through a simple linear formula. The numerical scheme inherits the properties of the scheme for the polytropic gas dynamics under a subcharacteristic condition on the adiabatic exponent of the polytropic gas. Such properties are discrete entropy inequality, positivity of the partial densities and internal energies, discrete maximum principle on the mass fractions, and discrete minimum principle on the entropy. This framework is based on the extension of the relaxation of energy of \textit{F. Coquel} and \textit{B. Perthame} [SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 35, No. 6, 2223--2249 (1998; Zbl 0960.76051)] for the gas dynamics equations to the model under consideration in this work. In the limit of instantaneous relaxation, it is shown that the solution formally converges to a unique and stable equilibrium solution to the multicomponent Euler equations. Using this framework, numerical schemes from three schemes for the polytropic Euler system: the Godunov exact Riemann solver, and the HLL and pressure relaxation based approximate Riemann solvers, are designed. Some numerical experiments in one and two space dimensions on flows with discontinuous solutions are presented to support the theoretical results.