Undercompressive shock waves and the Dafermos regularization (Q3147791)

The structural stability of special solutions to the Riemann problem for the hyperbolic system \(u_t +\) \(f(u)_x =0,\) \(x\in \mathbb{R},\) \(u\in \mathbb{R}^n ,\) is considered. Special solutions are those which have no rarefactions and consist of a finite number of constant states and discontinuities. Given the initial conditions \(u(0,x)|_{x<0}=\) \(u_L\), \(u(0,x)|_{x>0}=\) \(u_R ,\) the structural stability implies that solutions are stable to perturbations of \(u_L\), \(u_R ,\) and \(f(u)\) in the sense that the nearby Riemann problem has a solution with the same number of waves, of the same types. Shocks are assumed admissible and the corresponding criterion is associated with the parabolic system \(u_t +\) \(f(u)_x =\) \(\varepsilon (B(u)u_x)_x .\) Under some assumptions on \(f(u)\) and \(B(u)\), it is proved that for any structurally stable Riemann solution \(\overline{u}(x/t)\) the artificial regularization \(u_t +\) \(f(u)_x =\) \(\varepsilon t(B(u)u_x)_x \) has a solution near \(\overline{u}\) for small \(\varepsilon >0.\) To this end the Riemann solution \(\overline{u}(\xi),\) \(\xi =x/t,\) is treated as a singular solution of the ODE-system \(Df(u)u^{'}-\) \(\xi Iu^{'}=\) \(\varepsilon (B(u)u^{'})^{'} \) when \(\varepsilon =0\).