Existence of Global Weak Entropy Solutions to Some Nonstrictly Hyperbolic Systems

Abstract

In this paper, the Cauchy problem for nonstrictly hyperbolic systems of conservation laws modeling polymer flooding in enhanced oil recovery is studied, and a short proof of global existence of weak entropy solutions is obtained by using a new technique from the compensated compactness theorem coupled with the total variation estimate on one family of Riemann invariants. This work extends in some sense the previous works [T. Barkve, SIAM J. Appl. Math., 49 (1989), pp. 789--798; T. Johansen and R. Winther, SIAM J. Math. Anal., 19 (1988), pp. 541--566] about the global existence of weak solutions for the Riemann problem and by the author [J. Funct. Anal., 261 (2011), pp. 2797--2815] about the global weak solution of the Cauchy problem for an extended hyperbolic system of Keyfitz--Kranzer or Aw--Rascle type.