Characteristic-Based Numerical Schemes for Hyperbolic Systems With Nonlinear Relaxation

In order to embark the development of characteristic based schemes for hyperbolic systems with nonlinear stii source terms we have studied a prototype one-dimensional discrete-velocity Boltzmann equation. We show that the method can be evaluated at the cost of an explicit scheme and that yield accurate solutions even when the relaxation time is much less than the time step. Numerical experiments connrm that the quality of the results obtained is comparable with those of earlier approaches.