This note gives a numerical investigation for the popular high resolution conservative schemes when applied to inviscid, compressible, perfect gas flows with an initial high density ratio as well as a high pressure ratio. The results show that they work very inefficiently and may give inaccurate numerical results even over a very fine mesh when applied to such a problem. Numerical tests show that increasing the order of accuracy of the numerical schemes does not help much in improving the numerical results. How to cure this difficulty is still open.

This paper presents a second-order accurate adaptive Godunov method for twodimensional (2D) compressible multicomponent flows, which is an extension of the previous adaptive moving mesh method of Tang et al. (SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 41: 487-515, 2003) to unstructured triangular meshes in place of the structured quadrangular meshes. The current algorithm solves the governing equations of 2D multicomponent flows and the finite-volume approximations of the mesh equations by a fully conservative, second-order accurate Godunov scheme and a relaxed Jacobi-type iteration, respectively. The geometrybased conservative interpolation is employed to remap the solutions from the old mesh to the newly resulting mesh, and a simple slope limiter and a new monitor function are chosen to obtain oscillation-free solutions, and track and resolve both small, local, and large solution gradients automatically. Several numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate robustness and efficiency of the proposed method. They are a quasi-2D Riemann problem, the double-Mach reflection problem, the forward facing step problem, and two shock wave and bubble interaction problems.

This paper presents theoretical and numerical analyses of the sonic point glitch based on some numerical schemes for the Burgers equation and the Euler equations in fluid mechanics. The sonic glitch is formed in the sonic rarefaction fan. It has no any direct connection with the violation of the entropy condition or the size of numerical viscosity of a finitedifference scheme. Our results show that it is mainly coming from a disparity in wave speeds across the sonic point. If numerical viscosity depends on the characteristic direction, then the disparity may be formed between the numerical and physical wave speeds around the sonic point, and triggers the sonic wiggle in the numerical solution. We also find that the initial data reconstruction technique of van Leer can effectively eliminate the flaw around the sonic point for the Burgers equation. Some other possible cures are also suggested.

It was generally expected that monotone schemes are oscillation-free for hyperbolic conservation laws. However, recently local oscillations were observed and usually understood to be caused by relative phase errors. In order to further explain this, we first investigate the discretization of initial data that trigger the chequerboard mode, the highest frequency mode. Then we proceed to use the discrete Fourier analysis and the modified equation analysis to distinguish the dissipative and dispersive effects of numerical schemes for low frequency and high frequency modes, respectively. It is shown that the relative phase error is of order O(1) for the high frequency modes unj=λnkeiξj, ξ≈π, but of order O(ξ2) for low frequency modes (ξ≈0). In order to avoid numerical oscillations, the relative phase errors should be offset by numerical dissipation of at least the same order. Numerical damping, i.e. the zero order term in the corresponding modified equation, is important to dissipate the oscillations caused by the relative phase errors of high frequency modes. This is in contrast to the role of numerical viscosity, the second order term, which is the lowest order term usually present to suppress the relative phase errors of low frequency modes.

This Letter presents a numerical study of the interaction dynamics for the solitary waves of a nonlinear Dirac field with scalar self-interaction by using a fourth order accurate Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) method. Some new interaction phenomena are observed: (a) a new quasi-stable long-lived oscillating bound state from the binary collisions of a single-humped soliton and a two-humped soliton; (b) collapse in binary and ternary collisions; (c) strongly inelastic interaction in ternary collisions; and (d) bound states with a short or long lifetime from ternary collisions.