A general existence result for isothermal two-phase flows with phase transition

Abstract

Liquid–vapor flows with phase transitions have a wide range of applications. Isothermal two-phase flows described by a single set of isothermal Euler equations, where the mass transfer is modeled by a kinetic relation, have been investigated analytically in [M. Hantke, W. Dreyer and G. Warnecke, Exact solutions to the Riemann problem for compressible isothermal Euler equations for two-phase flows with and without phase transition, Quart. Appl. Math. 71(3) (2013) 509–540]. This work was restricted to liquid water and its vapor modeled by linear equations of state. The focus of this work lies on the generalization of the primary results to arbitrary substances, arbitrary equations of state and thus a more general kinetic relation. We prove existence and uniqueness results for Riemann problems. In particular, nucleation and cavitation are discussed.