On the piecewise smooth solutions to non-homogeneous scalar conservation laws (Q5946974)

The authors study the Cauchy problem for a nonhomogeneous scalar conservation law \[ \partial_t u+\partial_x f(u)+g(u)=0, \quad u(x,0)=u_0(x), \] where \(f,g\) are smooth, the flux \(f\) is strictly convex, \(g(0)=0\), and \(g\) satisfies the Lipschitz condition. It is shown that under certain conditions on the initial data the entropy solution has only a finite number of shocks. The authors also give some global estimates on derivatives of the entropy solution along the generalized characteristics. The above results are shown to be important for obtaining the optimal rate of convergence for various approximation methods.