Numerical approximation of entropy solutions for hyperbolic integro-differential equations

Abstract

Scalar hyperbolic integro-differential equations arise as models for e.g. radiating or self-gravitating fluid flow. We present finite volume schemes on unstructured grids applied to the Cauchy problem for such equations. For a rather general class of integral operators we show convergence of the approximate solutions to a possibly discontinuous entropy solution of the problem. For a specific model problem in radiative hydrodynamics we introduce a convergent fully discrete finite volume scheme. Under the assumption of sufficiently fast spatial decay of the entropy solution we can even establish the convergence rate h1/4|ln(h)| where h denotes the grid parameter. The convergence proofs rely on appropriate variants of the classical Kruzhkov method for local balance laws together with a truncation technique to cope with the nonlocal character of the integral operator.