Convergence Rate of Hypersonic Similarity for Steady Potential Flows Over Two-Dimensional Lipschitz Wedge

Abstract: This paper is devoted to establishing the convergence rate of the hypersonic similarity for the inviscid steady irrotational Euler flow over a two-dimensional Lipschitz slender wedge in $BV\cap L^1$ space. The rate we established is the same as the one predicted by Newtonian-Busemann law (see (3.29) in \cite[Page 67]{anderson} for more details)as the incoming Mach number $\textrm{M}{\infty}\rightarrow\infty$ for a fixed hypersonic similarity parameter $K$. The hypersonic similarity, which is also called the Mach-number independence principle, is equivalent to the following Van Dyke's similarity theory: For a given hypersonic similarity parameter $K$, when the Mach number of the flow is sufficiently large, the governing equations after the scaling are approximated by a simpler equation, that is called the hypersonic small-disturbance equation. To achieve the convergence rate, we approximate the curved boundary by piecewisely straight lines and find a new Lipschitz continuous map $\mathcal{P}{h}$ such that the trajectory can be obtained by piecing together the Riemann solutions near the approximated boundary. Next, we derive the $L^1$ difference estimates between the approximate solutions $U^{(\tau)}_{h,\nu}(x,\cdot)$ to the initial-boundary value problem for the scaled equations and the trajectories $\mathcal{P}{h}(x,0)(U^{\nu}{0})$ by piecing together all the Riemann solvers. Then, by the uniqueness and the compactness of $\mathcal{P}{h}$ and $U^{(\tau)}{h,\nu}$, we can further establish the $L^1$ estimates of order $\tau^2$ between the solutions to the initial-boundary value problem for the scaled equations and the solutions to the initial-boundary value problem for the hypersonic small-disturbance equations, if the total variations of the initial data and the tangential derivative of the boundary are sufficiently small.