Second-order convergence of monotone schemes for conservation laws

We prove that a class of monotone, \emph{$W_1$-contractive} schemes for scalar conservation laws converge at a rate of $\Delta x^2$ in the Wasserstein distance ($W_1$-distance), whenever the initial data is decreasing and consists of a finite number of piecewise constants. It is shown that the Lax--Friedrichs, Enquist--Osher and Godunov schemes are $W_1$-contractive. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the main result. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first proof of second-order convergence of any numerical method for discontinuous solutions of nonlinear conservation laws

Existence and uniqueness of traveling waves and error estimates for Godunov schemes of conservation laws

Abstract. The existence and uniqueness of the Lipschitz continuous traveling wave of Godunov’s scheme for scalar conservation laws are proved. The structure of the traveling waves is studied. The approximation error of Godunov’s scheme on single shock solutions is shown to be O(1)∆x. 1