The inviscid Burgers’ equation is a model for nonlinear wave
propagation, especially in fluid mechanics. It takes the form
The characteristic equations are, according to (20.4),
The solution of the two characteristic ordinary differential equations
above is simple:
The given solution of the inviscid Burgers’ equation shows that the characteristics are straight lines. This is troubling, since straight lines are likely to intersect. In particular, since the point on a given characteristic lines propagates with speed , faster points behind less fast ones will eventually overtake them.
As an example, consider the following problem:
Figure 20.5 shows profiles versus at various times. Note that for times greater than one, becomes a multiple-valued function. Physically, this is normally not acceptable: you can not have three different pressures or flow velocities at the same point.
The previous subsection noted that solutions of hyperbolic equations
with intersecting characteristics are usually not physically
acceptable. In fact, the desired solution for the inviscid
Burgers’ equation is usually taken to be the solution of the
viscous Burgers’ equation:
The viscous Burgers’ equation, too, is analytically solvable,
though the solution will be skipped here. The bottom line is that it
does not have multiple valued solutions. So what does the
solution of the viscous Burgers’ equation look like in the limit
that the viscosity becomes zero? Like figures 20.6 and
20.7. A jump discontinuity called a shock
develops in . The characteristics run into this shock and
disappear.
The question now is of course, what determines the precise location of the shock? Clearly, it should be somewhere in the region of intersecting characteristics, but that still leaves a considerable uncertainty. Equations for the shock are needed. They usually follow from the requirement that certain quantities remain conserved in the solution. This is addressed in the next subsections.
Often, partial differential equations express conservation of some physical quantity. For example, the continuity equation for the density of a fluid expresses conservation of mass of the fluid: the mass of a region of fluid is found by integrating the density over the volume of the region, and the continuity equation implies that mass is preserved in time.
The viscous Burgers’ equation, too, preserves some quantity. To
see what, integrate the equation over an interval from some position
to some position :
First consider the case that the problem is periodic and the integral
is over a full period. Then the quantities at and are the
same because of periodicity and drop away against each other. This
shows that
Next consider the case that the region of integration is not a period.
In that case, the Leibniz rule for differentiating integrals says that
It may be noted that in
If the solution of the inviscid Burgers’ equation is indeed supposed to approximate the solution of the viscous equation when the coefficient of viscosity becomes zero, it puts a condition on how the shocks must move. The shock is vanishingly thin and can only hold a negligible amount of conserved material. So, whatever goes into the shock at one side must come out at the other side.
The amounts going in and out of a region were derived in the previous
section for an interval . Taking point just before the shock
and just behind the shock, so that to practical purposes
with the shock velocity, equality of the amounts
going in and out requires
It follows that the shock must move with the average of the characteristic velocities and just before and after the shock. Figures 20.6 and 20.7 were obtained by finding the shock position from that relationship.
Shock relations, like this one for Burgers’ equation, are known as
Rankine-Hugoniot relations in fluid mechanics. When deriving shock
relations, make sure that the unknown variables are the conserved
quantities per unit volume. If you multiply the inviscid Burgers’
equation by , you get
Consider now Burgers’ equation for a unit pulse
initial condition:
This problem has a simple solution that is also quite wrong. It is shown in figure 20.8. It implies that the pulse moves with velocity towards the right. Note that both shocks satisfy the shock condition of the previous section; 0 at one side of each shock and 1 at the other side average in each case to .
The problem is with the left shock. Characteristics should run into
the shock for increasing time like for the right shock, not emerge out
of it as happens for the left one. In fluid mechanics, the left shock
is what is called an expansion
shock. It produces an
adiabatic decrease in entropy over the shock, something the second law
of thermodynamics does not allow. For that reason, the condition that
characteristics must run into the shock is called the “entropy
condition.”
The correct solution is shown in figure 20.9. The left jump
in the initial condition spreads out into what is called an
expansion far.
Unlike the shock, the expansion fan is
a perfectly good nonsingular solution of the Burgers“ equation,
though you must use the solution form with
0. The solution form does not work since
is the same, zero, on all characteristics, and u must be
different on different characteristics. Conversely, in the other
three regions, you must use the solution form
with either uniformly zero or uniformly one. There the solution
form does not work since is the same for all
characteristics and is not.
It may also be observed that the entropy condition is necessary to get a unique solution; both figures 20.8 and 20.9 satisfy the Burgers“ equation at all continuous points and the shock conditions at all discontinuities.