A high-order regularization of the non-linear shallow water equations with weakly singular shock waves and its approximation by finite volume methods

Abstract

Considered herein is a high-order regularization of the nonlinear shallow water equations within the framework of water wave theory. The regularized system is Galilean invariant and its solutions maintain an energy level that closely matches that of the nonlinear shallow water equations. However, in contrast to the classical nonlinear shallow water system, which admits discontinuous shock waves, the regularized formulation gives rise to weakly singular shock waves, which have continuous spatial profiles with unbounded spatial derivatives at isolated points. Using dynamical systems techniques, we establish the existence of such waves. Although weakly singular traveling waves remain continuous over their entire domain, their numerical approximation via finite element or pseudospectral schemes is affected by the emergence of spurious oscillations. To address this issue, we explore several finite volume methods for the accurate numerical approximation of these solutions. Our results demonstrate that the regularized system effectively reproduces the dynamics of the nonlinear shallow water equations in several scenarios. Moreover, our computations indicate that weakly singular shock waves are dynamically stable and can arise from general initial conditions connecting two asymptotic states. In contrast, other weakly singular structures, such as cusped solitons, appear to be structurally unstable, as we were unable to generate them from generic initial data.