On the use of symmetrizing variables for vacuums (Q2568743)

The paper examines the suitability of an approximate Godunov scheme combined with a particular choice of symmetrizing variables (the VFRoe scheme) to deal with the computation of either shallow water equations or Euler equations when vacuum occurs in the solution. This may happen when strong double rarefaction waves propagate, or when a shock wave expands over a dry area. In the first section one presents the VFRoe scheme applied to nonconservative variables. It requires solving a linearized Riemann problem at each interface in order to evaluate an approximate interface state; the numerical flux is then defined by computing the exact flux function for a given approximate interface state. The main idea in the paper concerns the use of symmetrizing variables to determine an approximate interface state by linearizing the symmetric form of the system. The technique is devoted to finite volume approximations. A short section completes the paper by focusing on the convective part of a four-equation model arising when computing compressible K-epsilon models.