Fold points and singularity induced bifurcation in inviscid transonic flow

Abstract

Transonic inviscid flow equation of elliptic–hyperbolic type when written in terms of the velocity components and similarity variable results in a second order nonlinear ODE having several features typical of differential–algebraic equations rather than ODEs. These features include the fold singularities (e.g. folded nodes and saddles, forward and backward impasse points), singularity induced bifurcation behavior and singularity crossing phenomenon. We investigate the above properties and conclude that the quasilinear DAEs of transonic flow have interesting properties that do not occur in other known quasilinear DAEs, for example, in MHD. Several numerical examples are included.