The shock reflection problem is one of the most important problems in mathematical fluid dynamics, since this problem not only arises in many important physical situations but also is fundamental for the theory of multidimensional conservation laws. However, most of the fundamental issues for shock reflection have not been understood. Therefore, it is important to establish the regularity of solutions to shock reflection in order to understand fully the phenomena of shock reflection. On the other hand, for a regular reflection configuration, the potential flow governs the exact behavior of the solution in $C^{1,1}$ across the pseudo-sonic circle even starting from the full Euler flow, that is, both of the nonlinear systems are actually the same in an physically significant region near the pseudo-sonic circle; thus, it becomes essential to understand the optimal regularity of solutions for the potential flow across the pseudo-sonic circle and at the point where the pseudo-sonic circle meets the reflected shock. In this paper, we study the regularity of solutions to regular shock reflection for potential flow. In particular, we prove that the $C^{1,1}$-regularity is optimal for the solution across the pseudo-sonic circle and at the point where the pseudo-sonic circle meets the reflected shock. We also obtain the $C^{2,α}$ regularity of the solution up to the pseudo-sonic circle in the pseudo-subsonic region. The problem involves two types of transonic flow: one is a continuous transition through the pseudo-sonic circle from the pseudo-supersonic region to the pseudo-subsonic region; the other a jump transition through the transonic shock as a free boundary from another pseudo-supersonic region to the pseudo-subsonic region.
We consider the problem of shock reflection on a solid wall in plane symmetry for a barotropic fluid. We establish a local in time solution after the point of reflection, thereby determining the state behind the reflected shock. The location of the reflected shock in space time being unknown the problem constitutes a free boundary problem. Furthermore, the quantity describing the thermodynamic state of the fluid along the wall being also unknown, complete data for the problem is only given in a single point, the reflection point.
When a plane shock hits a wedge head on, it experiences a reflection-diffraction process and then a self-similar reflected shock moves outward as the original shock moves forward in time. Experimental, computational, and asymptotic analysis has shown that various patterns of shock reflection may occur, including regular and Mach reflection. However, most of the fundamental issues for shock reflection have not been understood, including the global structure, stability, and transition of the different patterns of shock reflection. Therefore, it is essential to establish the global existence and …
Shock waves are steep wave fronts that are fundamental in nature, especially in high-speed fluid flows. When a shock hits an obstacle, or a flying body meets a shock, shock reflection/diffraction phenomena occur. In this paper, we show how several longstanding shock reflection/diffraction problems can be formulated as free boundary problems, discuss some recent progress in developing mathematical ideas, approaches, and techniques for solving these problems, and present some further open problems in this direction. In particular, these shock problems include von Neumann's problem for shock refl…
When a plane shock hits a wedge head on, it experiences a reflection-diffraction process, and then a self-similar reflected shock moves outward as the original shock moves forward in time. The complexity of reflection-diffraction configurations was first reported by Ernst Mach in 1878, and experimental, computational, and asymptotic analysis has shown that various patterns of shock reflection-diffraction configurations may occur, including regular reflection and Mach reflection. In this paper we start with various shock reflection-diffraction phenomena, their fundamental scientific issues, and…
We revisit the asymptotic analysis of the KdV shock problem in the soliton region. Our approach is based on the analysis of the associated Riemann-Hilbert problem and we extend the domain of validity of the asymptotic formulas while at the same time requiring less decay and smoothness for the initial data.
When a plane shock hits a two-dimensional wedge head on, it experiences a reflection-diffraction process, and then a self-similar reflected shock moves outward as the original shock moves forward in time. The experimental, computational, and asymptotic analysis has indicated that various patterns occur, including regular reflection and Mach reflection. The von Neumann conjectures on the transition from regular to Mach reflection involve the existence, uniqueness, and stability of regular shock reflection-diffraction configurations, generated by concave cornered wedges for compressible flow. In…
In this paper, we construct counterexamples to the local existence of low-regularity solutions to elastic wave equations in three spatial dimensions (3D). Inspired by the recent works of Christodoulou, we generalize Lindblad's classic results on the scalar wave equation by showing that the Cauchy problem for 3D elastic waves, a physical system with multiple wave-speeds, is ill-posed in $H^3(\mathbb{R}^3)$. We further prove that the ill-posedness is caused by instantaneous shock formation, which is characterized by the vanishing of the inverse foliation density. The main difficulties of the 3D …
Shock waves are fundamental in nature. One of the most fundamental problems in fluid mechanics is shock reflection-diffraction by wedges. The complexity of reflection-diffraction configurations was first reported by Ernst Mach in 1878. The problems remained dormant until the 1940s when John von Neumann, as well as other mathematical/experimental scientists, began extensive research into all aspects of shock reflection-diffraction phenomena. In this paper we start with shock reflection-diffraction phenomena and historic perspectives, their fundamental scientific issues and theoretical roles in …
We are concerned with the suitability of the main models of compressible fluid dynamics for the Lighthill problem for shock diffraction by a convex corned wedge, by studying the regularity of solutions of the problem, which can be formulated as a free boundary problem. In this paper, we prove that there is no regular solution that is subsonic up to the wedge corner for potential flow. This indicates that, if the solution is subsonic at the wedge corner, at least a characteristic discontinuity (vortex sheet or entropy wave) is expected to be generated, which is consistent with the experimental …
We present our recent results on the Prandtl-Meyer reflection for supersonic potential flow past a solid ramp. When a steady supersonic flow passes a solid ramp, there are two possible configurations: the weak shock solution and the strong shock solution. Elling-Liu's theorem (2008) indicates that the steady supersonic weak shock solution can be regarded as a long-time asymptotics of an unsteady flow for a class of physical parameters determined by certain assumptions for potential flow. In this paper we discuss our recent progress in removing these assumptions and establishing the stability t…
The problem of a weak shock, reflected and diffracted by a wedge, is studied for the two-dimensional compressible Euler system. Some recent developments are overviewed and a perspective is presented within the context of a real gas, modeled by the van der Waals equation of state. The regular reflection configuration and the detachment criterion are studied in the light of real gas effects. Some basic features of the phenomenon and the nature of the self-similar flow pattern are explored using asymptotic expansions. The analysis presented here predicts several inviscid flow properties of the re…
We consider shock reflection which has a well-known local non-uniqueness: the reflected shock can be either of two choices, called weak and strong. We consider cases where existence of a global solution with weak reflected shock has been proven, for compressible potential flow. If there was a global strong-shock solution as well, then potential flow would be ill-posed. However, we prove non-existence of strong-shock analogues in a natural class of candidates.
We investigate the regularity issue for the diffuse reflection boundary problem to the stationary linearized Boltzmann equation for hard sphere potential, cutoff hard potential, or cutoff Maxwellian molecular gases in a strictly convex bounded domain. We obtain pointwise estimates for first derivatives of the solution provided the boundary temperature is bounded differentiable and the solution is bounded. This result can be understood as a stationary version of the velocity averaging lemma and mixture lemma.
In a previous paper we studied the thermodynamic and kinetic theory for an ionized gas, in one space dimension; in this paper we provide an application of those results to the reflection of a shock wave in an electromagnetic shock tube. Under some reasonable limitations, which fully agree with experimental data, we prove that both the incident and the reflected shock waves satisfy the Lax entropy conditions; this result holds even outside genuinely nonlinear regions, which are present in the model. We show that the temperature increases in a significant way behind the incident shock front but …
We give a constructive proof that coordinate transformations exist which raise the regularity of the gravitational metric tensor from $C^{0,1}$ to $C^{1,1}$ in a neighborhood of points of shock wave collision in General Relativity. The proof applies to collisions between shock waves coming from different characteristic families, in spherically symmetric spacetimes. Our result here implies that spacetime is locally inertial and corrects an error in our earlier RSPA-publication, which led us to the false conclusion that such coordinate transformations, which smooth the metric to $C^{1,1}$, canno…
We consider the Boltzmann equation with external fields in strictly convex domains with diffuse reflection boundary condition. As long as the normal derivative of external fields satisfy some sign condition on the boundary (1.8) we construct classical $C^1$ solutions away from the grazing set. As a consequence we construct solutions of Vlasov-Poisson-Boltzmann system having bounded derivatives away from the grazing set (weighted $W^{1,\infty}$ estimate). In particular this improves the recent regularity estimate of such system in weighted $W^{1,p}$ space for $p<6$ in [1].
In this paper, we study the problem of shock reflection by a wedge, with the potential flow equation, which is a simplification of the Euler System. In the work of M. Feldman and G. Chen, the existence theory of shock reflection problems with the potential flow equation was established, when the wedge is symmetric w.r.t. the direction of the upstream flow. As a natural extension, we study non-symmetric cases, i.e. when the direction of the upstream flow forms a nonzero angle with the symmetry axis of the wedge. The main idea of investigating the existence of solutions to non-symmetric problems…
We deal with a class of Lipschitz vector functions $U=(u_1,...,u_h)$ whose components are non negative, disjointly supported and verify an elliptic equation on each support. Under a weak formulation of a reflection law, related to the Pohouzaev identity, we prove that the nodal set is a collection of $C^{1,α}$ hyper-surfaces (for every $0<α<1$), up to a residual set with small Hausdorff dimension. This result applies to the asymptotic limits of reaction-diffusion systems with strong competition interactions, to optimal partition problems involving eigenvalues, as well as to segregated standing…
We are concerned with geometric properties of transonic shocks as free boundaries in two-dimensional self-similar coordinates for compressible fluid flows, which are not only important for the understanding of geometric structure and stability of fluid motions in continuum mechanics but also fundamental in the mathematical theory of multidimensional conservation laws. A transonic shock for the Euler equations for self-similar potential flow separates elliptic (subsonic) and hyperbolic (supersonic) phases of the self-similar solution of the corresponding nonlinear partial differential equation …
The Boltzmann equation is a fundamental kinetic equation that describes the dynamics of dilute gas. In this paper we study the regularity of both dynamical and steady Boltzmann equation in strictly convex domain with the Cercignani-Lampis (C-L) boundary condition. The C-L boundary condition describes the intermediate reflection law between diffuse reflection and specular reflection via two accommodation coefficients. We construct local weighted $C^1$ dynamical solution using repeated interaction through the characteristic. When we assume small fluctuation to the wall temperature and accommodat…
We establish existence of finite energy weak solutions to the kinetic Fokker-Planck equation and the linearized Landau equation near Maxwellian, in the presence of specular reflection boundary condition for general domains. Moreover, by using a method of reflection and the $S_p$ estimate previously established by the first and the last author, we prove regularity in the kinetic Sobolev spaces $S_p$ and anisotropic Hölder spaces for such weak solutions. Such $S_p$ regularity leads to the uniqueness of weak solutions.
We show that the regularity of the gravitational metric tensor in spherically symmetric spacetimes cannot be lifted from $C^{0,1}$ to $C^{1,1}$ within the class of $C^{1,1}$ coordinate transformations in a neighborhood of a point of shock wave interaction in General Relativity, without forcing the determinant of the metric tensor to vanish at the point of interaction. This is in contrast to Israel's Theorem which states that such coordinate transformations always exist in a neighborhood of a point on a smooth single shock surface. The results thus imply that points of shock wave interaction re…
We derive a new formulation of the relativistic Euler equations that exhibits remarkable properties. This new formulation consists of a coupled system of geometric wave, transport, and elliptic equations, sourced by nonlinearities that are null forms relative to the acoustical metric. Our new formulation is well-suited for various applications, in particular for the study of stable shock formation, as it is surveyed in the paper. Moreover, using the new formulation presented here, we establish a local well-posedness result showing that the vorticity and the entropy of the fluid are one degree …
Shock solutions for the one-dimensional information geometric regularization of compressible flow
Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室）；University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；California State University, Long Beach（加州州立大学长滩分校）；New York University（纽约大学）
We investigate a class of nonlocal conservation laws with the nonlinear advection coupling both local and nonlocal mechanism, which arises in several applications such as the collective motion of cells and traffic flows. It is proved that the $C^1$ solution regularity of this class of conservation laws will persist at least for a short time. This persistency may continue as long as the solution gradient remains bounded. Based on this result, we further identify sub-thresholds for finite time shock formation in traffic flow models with Arrhenius look-ahead dynamics.
This article is concerned in establishing the existence and regularity of solution of semi-hyperbolic patch problem for two-dimensional isentropic Euler equations with van der Waals gas. This type of solution appears in the transonic flow over an airfoil and Guderley reflection and is very common in the numerical solution of Riemann problems. We use the idea of characteristic decomposition and bootstrap method to prove the existence of global smooth solution which is uniformly $C^{1, \frac{1}{2}}$ continuous up to the sonic curve. We also prove that the sonic curve is $C^{1, \frac{1}{2}}$ cont…
