Discontinuous solutions of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations with degenerate viscosity coefficient and vacuum

In this paper, we study the evolutions of the interfaces between gas and the vacuum for onedimensional viscous gas motions when the initial density connects to vacuum continuously. The degeneracy appears in the initial data and has effect on the viscosity coefficient because the coefficient is assumed to be a power function of the density. Using some new a priori estimates, we establish the new local (in time) existence and uniqueness results under minimal hypotheses on the initial density, so that the interval for the power of the density in the viscosity coefficient is enlarged to (0,γ ). In particular, we include the important case that the initial density could be piecewise smooth with arbitrarily large jump discontinuities, and could degenerate to zero. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.