Second-order schemes for conservation laws with discontinuous flux modelling clarifier–thickener units

Continuously operated clarifier–thickener (CT) units can be modeled by a non-linear, scalar conservation law with a flux that involves two parameters that depend discontinuously on the space variable. This paper presents two numerical schemes for the solution of this equation that have formal second-order accuracy in both the time and space variable. One of the schemes is based on standard total variation diminishing (TVD) methods, and is addressed as a simple TVD (STVD) scheme, while the other scheme, the so-called flux-TVD (FTVD) scheme, is based on the property that due to the presence of the discontinuous parameters, the flux of the solution (rather than the solution itself) has the TVD property. The FTVD property is enforced by a new nonlocal limiter algorithm. We prove that the FTVD scheme converges to a BVt solution of the conservation law with discontinuous flux. Numerical examples for both resulting schemes are presented. They produce comparable numerical errors, while the FTVD scheme is supported by convergence analysis. The accuracy of both schemes is superior to that of the monotone first-order scheme based on the adaptation of the Engquist–Osher scheme to the discontinuous flux setting of the CT model (Bürger, Karlsen and Towers in SIAM J Appl Math 65:882–940, 2005). In the CT application there is interest in modelling sediment compressibility by an additional strongly degenerate diffusion term. Second-order schemes for this extended equation are obtained by combining either the STVD or the FTVD scheme with a Crank–Nicolson discretization of the degenerate diffusion term in a Strang-type operator splitting procedure. Numerical examples illustrate the resulting schemes.