Research in Applied Mathematics.

Abstract : Most of the work has been on shock dynamics, a term we use for problems of the focusing of curved shocks, the diffraction of shocks by bodies or density layers, the propagation of shocks down curved tubes and channels, and the stability of converging shocks. Our earlier theoretical work is described in the book Linear and Nonlinear by G.B. Whitham, and references given there. This theoretical work on shock dynamics had been found by experimenters to be extremely useful in practical situations. However, the analytic results had been limited to fairly simple situations. The numerical scheme originally proposed was again limited and could not hope to handle some of the interesting practical situations. Keywords: Shock waves, Solitons, Roll waves; Nonlinear wave propagation; Numerical methods.