Viscous and inviscid regularizations in a class of evolutionary partial differential equations

Abstract

We investigate solution properties of a class of evolutionary partial differential equations (PDEs) with viscous and inviscid regularization. An equation in this class of PDEs can be written as an evolution equation, involving only first-order spatial derivatives, coupled with the Helmholtz equation. A recently developed two-step iterative method (P.H. Chiu, L. Lee, T.W.H. Sheu, A dispersion-relation-preserving algorithm for a nonlinear shallow-water wave equation, J. Comput. Phys. 228 (2009) 8034–8052) is employed to study this class of PDEs. The method is in principle superior for PDE’s in this class as it preserves their physical dispersive features. In particular, we focus on a Leray-type regularization (H.S. Bhat, R.C. Fetecau, A Hamiltonian regularization of the Burgers equation, J. Nonlinear Sci. 16 (2006) 615–638) of the Hopf equation proposed in alternative to the classical Burgers viscous term. We show that the regularization effects induced by the alternative model can be vastly different from those induced by Burgers viscosity depending on the smoothness of initial data in the limit of zero regularization. We validate our numerical scheme by comparison with a particle method which admits closed form solutions. Further effects of the interplay between the dispersive terms comprising the Leray-regularization are illustrated by solutions of equations in this class resulting from regularized Burgers equation by selective elimination of dispersive terms.