Convergence to equilibrium rarefaction waves for discontinuous solutions of shallow water wave equations with relaxation

The purpose of this paper is to study the discontinuous solutions to a shallow water wave equation with relaxation. The typical initial value problem of discontinuous solutions is the Riemann problem. Unlike the homogeneous hyperbolic conservation laws, due to the inhomogeneity of the system studied here, the solutions of the Riemann problem do not have a self-similar structure anymore. This problem can be formulated as a free boundary problem. We show that the Riemann solutions still have a piecewise smooth structure globally and converge to the rarefaction waves of the equilibrium equation as time tends to infinity. © 2005 Brown University.