Shock reflection for the damped $P$-system (Q4430732)

The authors of this interesting paper study the \(P\)-system with damping in Lagrangian coordinates \[ v_t-u_x=0, \qquad u_t+p_x=-\alpha u,\quad\alpha >0, \] where \(v>0\) is the specific volume, \(u\) is the velocity and \(p=p(v)\) is the pressure with \(p'(v)<0\). It is considered the typical case that \(p(v)=v^{-\gamma }\) with \(\gamma \geq 1\). The global existence and asymptotic behavior of the weak entropy solution, the piecewise smooth solution with one shock discontinuity, on a strip domain is studied. The main result is that for small smooth initial data and boundary value with only one small jump at \((x,t)=(0,0)\), the piecewise smooth solution with one shock discontinuity exists globally in time. The shock discontinuity begins from \((x,t)=(0,0)\), moves forward and reflects in a finite time at the boundary \(x=1\) to form a 1-shock, which goes backward and reflects at \(x=0\) also in a finite time to create a new 2-shock. The shock strength decays exponentially and never disappears in finite time. As \(t\to \infty \), the solution converges to a constant state determined by the initial and the boundary conditions.