We study the oscillatory behavior that arises in solutions of a dispersive numerical scheme for the Hopf equation whenever the classical solution of the equation develops a singularity. Modulation equations are derived that describe period-two oscillations so long as the solution of those equations takes values for which the equations are hyperbolic. However, those equations have an elliptic region that may be entered by its solutions in a finite time, after which the corresponding period-two oscillations are seen to break down. This kind of phenomenon has not been observed for integrable schemes. The generation and propagation of period-two oscillations are asymptotically analyzed and a matching formula is found for the transition between oscillatory and nonoscillatory regions. Modulation equations are also presented for period-three oscillations. Numerical experiments are carried out that illustrate our analysis.

In this paper, we investigate the boundary layer behavior of solutions to the one dimensional Broadwell model of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation for small mean free path. We consider the analogue of Maxwell's diffusive and the reflexive boundary conditions. It is found that even for such a simple model, there are boundary layers due to purely kinetic effects which cannot be detected by the corresponding Navier-Stokes system. It is also found numerically that a compressive boundary layer is not always stable in the sense that it may detach from the boundary and move into the interior of the gas as a shock layer.

In this paper, we study the fluid-dynamic limit for the one-dimensional Broadwell model of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation in the presence of boundaries. We consider an analogue of Maxwell's diffusive and reflective boundary conditions. The boundary layers can be classified as either compressive or expansive in terms of the associated characteristic fields. We show that both expansive and compressive boundary layers (before detachment) are nonlinearly stable and that the layer effects are localized so that the fluid dynamic approximation is valid away from the boundary. We also show that the same conclusion holds for short time without the structural conditions on the boundary layers. A rigorous estimate for the distance between the kinetic solution and the fluid-dynamic solution in terms of the mean-free path in theL∞-norm is obtained provided that the interior fluid flow is smooth. The rate of convergence is optimal.

Simple, efficient, and accurate finite difference methods are introduced for 3D unsteady viscous incompressible flows in the vorticity–vector potential formulation on nonstaggered grids. Two different types of methods are discussed. They differ in the implementation of the normal component of the vorticity boundary condition and consequently the enforcement of the divergence free condition for vorticity. Both second-order and fourth-order accurate schemes are developed. A detailed accuracy test is performed, revealing the structure of the error and the effect of how the convective terms are discretized near the boundary. The influence of the divergence free condition for vorticity to the overall accuracy is studied. Results on the cubic driven cavity flow at Reynolds number 500 and 3200 are shown and compared with that of the MAC scheme.

We are concerned with the convergence of Lax-Wendroff type schemes with high resolution to the entropy solutions for conservation laws. These schemes include the original Lax-Wendroff scheme proposed by Lax and Wendroff in 1960 and its two step versions–the Richtmyer scheme and the MacCormack scheme. For the convex scalar conservation laws with algebraic growth flux functions, we prove the convergence of these schemes to the weak solutions satisfying appropriate entropy inequalities. The proof is based on detailed L p estimates of the approximate solutions, H −1 compactness estimates of the corresponding entropy dissipation measures, and some compensated compactness frameworks. Then these techniques are generalized to study the convergence problem for the nonconvex scalar case and the hyperbolic systems of conservation