On admissible positions of transonic shocks for steady Euler flows in a 3-D axisymmetric cylindrical nozzle (Q831084)

The authors analyze the existence of transonic shocks for steady Euler flows in a 3-D axisymmetric cylindrical nozzle defined as \(\widetilde{\mathcal{N}} = \{(z,r) \in \mathbb{R}^{2} \): \(0 < z < L\), \(0 < r < 1 +\varphi (z) \}\), where \(\varphi (z)=\int_{0}^{z}\tan (\sigma \Theta (\tau ))d\tau \), for a given positive function \(\Theta \in C^{2,\alpha }([0,L])\). The authors start from the Euler equations written in this axisymmetric situation as: \(\partial _{z}(r\rho u)+\partial _{r}(r\rho v)=0\), \(\partial _{z}(\rho uv)+\partial _{r}(p+\rho v^{2})+\frac{\rho v^{2}}{r}=0\), \(\partial _{z}(p+\rho u^{2})+\partial _{r}(\rho uv)+\frac{\rho uv}{r}=0\), \(\partial _{z}(r\rho uB)+\partial _{r}(r\rho vB)=0\), where \(u=u_{1}\), \(v=u_{2}\cos \overline{\omega } +u_{3}\sin \overline{\omega }\) mean the velocity field, \(\rho \) is the density, \(p\) is the pressure and \(B=\frac{1}{2}\left\vert \mathbf{u}\right\vert ^{2}+i\) is Bernoulli's constant, \(i\) being the enthalpy. The fluid is supposed to be a polytropic gas with the state equation \(p=A(s)\rho ^{\gamma }\), where \(s\) is the entropy, \(\gamma >1\) is the adiabatic exponent, and \( A(s)=(\gamma -1)\exp(\frac{s-s_{0}}{c_{\upsilon }})\), \(c_{\upsilon }\) being the specific heat at constant volume. In the case of a single shock front located at \(\Gamma _{s}^{\widetilde{\mathcal{N}}}=\{z=\psi _{\widetilde{ \mathcal{N}}}(r)\}\), the nozzle is divided in two pieces \(\widetilde{ \mathcal{N}}_{-}=\{(z,r)\in \mathbb{R}^{2}:0 < z < \psi _{\widetilde{\mathcal{N}} }(r)\), \(0 < r < 1+\varphi (z)\}\), \(\widetilde{\mathcal{N}}_{+}=\{(z,r)\in \mathbb{R}^{2}:\psi _{\widetilde{\mathcal{N}}}(r) < z < L\), \(0 < r<1+\varphi (z)\}\). The authors consider Rankine-Hugoniot conditions on the shock front and a slip boundary condition on the wall of the nozzle. A supersonic state is imposed at the entrance of the nozzle and the pressure is known at the exit of the nozzle. Under further hypotheses on the data of the problem and assuming that the parameter \(\sigma \) which appears in the above definition of \(\varphi \), the authors prove the existence of at least one transonic shock solution to this free boundary problem. For the proof, the authors first introduce a modified Lagrange transformation already presented by \textit{S. Weng} et al. [``Structural stability of the transonic shock problem in a divergent three-dimensional axisymmetric perturbed nozzle'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1908.01694}], which brings the above axisymmetric domain to a rectangle. They describe a free boundary problem for the linearized Euler system, which allows to determine an initial approximation. They establish a well-posed theory for a boundary value problem of the elliptic sub-system of this linearized Euler system at the subsonic state behind the shock front and they prove the existence of a solution to such problem under some solvability condition to be imposed on the boundary data. This allows to determine the position of the free boundary. The authors then apply a nonlinear iteration scheme, starting from the initial approximation, and this scheme is proved to be well-defined and contractive.