Well-posedness theory for nonlinear scalar conservation laws on networks

Abstract

We consider nonlinear scalar conservation laws posed on a network. We define an entropy condition for scalar conservation laws on networks and establish $L^1$ stability, and thus uniqueness, for weak solutions satisfying the entropy condition. We apply standard finite volume methods and show stability and convergence to the unique entropy solution, thus establishing existence of a solution in the process. Both our existence and stability/uniqueness theory is centred around families of stationary states for the equation. In one important case – for monotone fluxes with an upwind difference scheme – we show that the set of (discrete) stationary solutions is indeed sufficiently large to suit our general theory. We demonstrate the method's properties through several numerical experiments.