Shock reflection for general quasilinear hyperbolic systems of conservation laws Original Research Article

This paper concerns the reflection of shock waves for general quasilinear hyperbolic systems of conservation laws in one space dimension. It is shown that the mixed initial–boundary value problem for general quasilinear hyperbolic systems of conservation laws with nonlinear boundary conditions on the quarter-plane {(t,x)∣t≥0,x≥0}{(t,x)∣t≥0,x≥0} admits a unique global piecewise C1C1 solution u=u(t,x)u=u(t,x) containing only shock waves with small amplitude and this solution possesses a global structure similar to that of the Riemann solution View the MathML sourceu=U(xt) of the corresponding Riemann problem, if the positive eigenvalues are genuinely nonlinear and the Riemann solution has only shock waves, and no rarefaction waves and contact discontinuities. Our result indicates that the Riemann solution View the MathML sourceu=U(xt) consisting of only shock waves possesses a semi-global nonlinear structure stability.