Existence and Stability of Supersonic Euler Flows Past Lipschitz Wedges

Abstract

It is well known that, when the vertex angle of a straight wedge is less than the critical angle, there exists a shock-front emanating from the wedge vertex so that the constant states on both sides of the shock-front are supersonic. Since the shock-front at the vertex is usually strong, especially when the vertex angle of the wedge is large, then a global flow is physically required to be governed by the isentropic or adiabatic Euler equations. In this paper, we systematically study two-dimensional steady supersonic Euler (i.e. nonpotential) flows past Lipschitz wedges and establish the existence and stability of supersonic Euler flows when the total variation of the tangent angle functions along the wedge boundaries is suitably small. We develop a modified Glimm difference scheme and identify a Glimm-type functional, by naturally incorporating the Lipschitz wedge boundary and the strong shock-front and by tracing the interaction not only between the boundary and weak waves, but also between the strong shock-front and weak waves, to obtain the required BV estimates. These estimates are then employed to establish the convergence of both approximate solutions to a global entropy solution and corresponding approximate strong shock-fronts emanating from the vertex to the strong shock-front of the entropy solution. The regularity of strong shock-fronts emanating from the wedge vertex and the asymptotic stability of entropy solutions in the flow direction are also established.