Abstract: During the recent decades there was an enormous amount of activity related to the construction and analysis of modern algorithms for the approximate solution of nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws and related problems.To present some aspects of this successful activity, we discuss the analytical tools which are used in the development of convergence theories for these algorithms. These include classical compactness arguments (based on BV a priori estimates), the use of compensated compactness arguments (based on $H^{-1}$-compact entropy production), measure valued solutions (measured by their negative entropy production), and finally, we highlight the most recent addition to this bag of analytical tools -- the use of averaging lemmas which yield new compactness and regularity results for nonlinear conservation laws and related equations.
We demonstrate how these analytical tools are used in the convergence analysis of approximate solutions for hyperbolic conservation laws and related equations. Our discussion includes examples of Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) finite-difference schemes; error estimates derived from the one-sided stability of Godunov-type methods for convex conservation laws (and their multidimensional analogue -- viscosity solutions of demi-concave Hamilton-Jacobi equations); we outline, in the one-dimensional case, the convergence proof of finite-element streamline-diffusion and spectral viscosity schemes based on the div-curl lemma; we also address the questions of convergence and error estimates for multidimensional finite-volume schemes on non-rectangular grids; and finally, we indicate the convergence of approximate solutions with underlying kinetic formulation, e.g., finite-volume and relaxation schemes, once their regularizing effect is quantified in terms of the averaging lemma.
mailto:conservation@math.ntnu.no Last modified: Sat May 30 15:30:07 1998