A degenerate elliptic problem from subsonic-sonic flows in general nozzles (Q2420533)

The authors study two-dimensional steady isentropic compressible subsonic-sonic flows for suitable nozzles. Essentially, the formulation is a free boundary problem for a quasilinear degenerate elliptic equation. It is shown that, for a large class of nozzles, if the variation rate of the cross section of the nozzle is sufficiently small, then there exists a unique subsonic-sonic flows in the nozzle such that the sonic curve intersects the upper wall at a fixed point and the velocity of the flow is along the normal direction at the inlet and the sonic curve. Also, it turns out that the sonic curve of this flow is a free boundary, where the flow is singular so that the speed is Hölder continuous while the acceleration blows up at the sonic state.