Systems of quasilinear conservation laws and algorithmization of variational principles (Q901861)

In this paper author's try to formulate a particular variational principe for special equations in the case of a single spatial variable. It is shown that each field of characteristics can be represented as a solution of a variational problem. Moreover, the Rankine-Hugoniot relations are satisfied at the corner points or at the intersection of the characristics of a single family. As a example the Hopf equation is considered, a numerical algorithm is constructed on the basis of a variational principle.