One of the main challenges in computational simulations of gas detonation propagation is that negative density or negative pressure may emerge during the time evolution, which will cause blow-ups. Therefore, schemes with provable positivity-preserving of density and pressure are desired. First order and second order positivity-preserving schemes were well studied. For high order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method, even though the characteristicwise TVB limiter can kill oscillations, it is not sufficient to maintain the positivity. A simple solution for arbitrarily high order positivity-preserving schemes solving Euler equations was proposed recently. In this paper, we first discuss an extension of the technique to design arbitrarily high order positivity-preserving DG schemes for reactive Euler equations. We then present a simpler and more robust implementation of the positivity-preserving limiter than the one before. Numerical tests, including very demanding examples in gaseous detonations, indicate that the third order DG scheme with the new positivity-preserving limiter produces satisfying results even without the TVB limiter.

In this paper, we introduce a general approach for proving optimal $L^2$ error estimates for the semi-discrete local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) methods solving linear high order wave equations. The optimal order of error estimates hold not only for the solution itself but also for the auxiliary variables in the LDG method approximating the various order derivatives of the solution. Several examples including the one-dimensional third order wave equation, one-dimensional fifth order wave equation, and multi-dimensional Schr\"{o}dinger equation are explored to demonstrate this approach. The main idea is to derive energy stability for the various auxiliary variables in the LDG discretization, via using the scheme and its time derivatives with different test functions. Special projections are utilized to eliminate the jump terms at the cell boundaries in the error estimate in order to achieve the optimal order of accuracy.

The entropy solutions of the compressible Euler equations satisfy a minimum principle for the specific entropy. First order schemes such as Godunov-type and Lax-Friedrichs schemes and the second order kinetic schemes also satisfy a discrete minimum entropy principle. In this paper, we show an extension of the positivity-preserving high order schemes for the compressible Euler equations, to enforce the minimum entropy principle for high order finite volume and discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes.

In our earlier work, we constructed uniformly high order accurate discontinuous Galerkin (DG) and finite volume schemes which preserve positivity of density and pressure for the Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics. In this paper, we present an extension of this framework to construct positivity-preserving high order essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) and weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) finite difference schemes for compressible Euler equations. General equations of state and source terms are also discussed. Numerical tests of the fifth order finite difference WENO scheme are reported to demonstrate the good behavior of such schemes.

In earlier work, two of the authors developed a high order accurate numerical boundary condition procedure for hyperbolic conservation laws, which allows the computation using high order finite difference schemes on Cartesian meshes to solve problems in arbitrary physical domains whose boundaries do not coincide with grid lines. This procedure is based on the so-called inverse Lax-Wendroff (ILW) procedure for inflow boundary conditions and high order extrapolation for outflow boundary conditions. However, the algebra of the ILW procedure is quite heavy for two dimensional (2D) hyperbolic systems, which makes it difficult to implement the procedure for order of accuracy higher than three. In this paper, we first discuss a simplified and improved implementation for this procedure, which uses the relatively complicated ILW procedure only for the evaluation of the first order normal derivatives. Fifth order WENO type extrapolation is used for all other derivatives, regardless of the direction of the local characteristics and the smoothness of the solution. This makes the implementation of a fifth order boundary treatment practical for 2D systems with source terms. For no-penetration boundary condition of compressible inviscid flows, a further simplification is discussed, in which the evaluation of the tangential derivatives involved in the ILW procedure is avoided. We test our simplified and improved boundary treatment for Euler equations with or without source terms representing chemical reactions in detonations. The results demonstrate the designed fifth order accuracy, stability, and good performance for problems involving complicated interactions between detonation/shock waves and solid boundaries.