Propagating phase boundaries: Formulation of the problem and existence via the Glimm method (Q687186)

The author studies the propagation of phase boundaries and their existence by using the Glimm method [\textit{J. Glimm}, \textit{D. Marchesin} and \textit{O. Mc Bryan}, J. Comput. Phys. 39, 179-200 (1981; Zbl 0469.76079)]. For this, he treats the hyperbolic-elliptic system of two conservation laws which describes the dynamics of an elastic material having a non-monotone strain-stress function. He proposes a notion of admissible weak solution for such a system in the class of functions of bounded variation. The formulation includes an entropy inequality, a kinetic relation along the subsonic phase boundary and an initiation criterion for the appearence of new phase boundaries. He further proves the \(L^ 1\)-continuous dependence of the solution to the Riemann problem. His main result yields the existence and the stability of propagating phase boundaries. The proofs are based on Glimm's scheme and, in particular, on the techniques of Glimm and Lax. In order to deal with the kinetic relation, he proves a result on pointwise convergence of the phase boundary. This work is quite interesting and may be very useful for those researchers working in the area of hyperbolic systems.