A system of conservation laws including a stiff relaxation term; the 2D case (Q2565275)

The paper is concerned with the analysis of a system of hyperbolic conservation laws in two space dimensions with a stiff relaxation term in the right side. A finite difference method of Lax-Friedrich type in combination with an implicit backward Euler method for constructing the approximate solutions of this system is used. As a result of the analysis of this family of approximate solutions the existence, uniqueness and stability of entropy solutions of the input system are proved. An error bound of the order of \(O(\sqrt{\Delta t})\) measured in \(L^1\) independent of the relaxation time \(\delta\) is obtained. It is proved that the solutions of the system converge to the solution of an equilibrium model as \(\delta\to 0\) with the order \(O(\delta^{2/3})\) measured also in \(L^1\). Finally, the theoretical results are illustrated by some numerical examples.