A Second Order Accurate Kinetic Relaxation Scheme for Inviscid Compressible Flows

In this paper we present a kinetic relaxation scheme for the Euler equations of gas dynamics in one space dimension. The method is easily applicable to solve any complex system of conservation laws. The numerical scheme is based on a relaxation approximation for conservation laws viewed as a discrete velocity model of the Boltzmann equation of kinetic theory. The discrete kinetic equation is solved by a splitting method consisting of a convection phase and a collision phase. The convection phase involves only the solution of linear transport equations and the collision phase instantaneously relaxes the distribution function to an equilibrium distribution. We prove that the first order accur…