Riemann solvers with evolved initial conditions

Abstract The scope of this paper is three fold. We first formulate upwind and symmetric schemes for hyperbolic equations with non‐conservative terms. Then we propose upwind numerical schemes for conservative and non‐conservative systems, based on a Riemann solver, the initial conditions of which are evolved non‐linearly in time, prior to a simple linearization that leads to closed‐form solutions. The Riemann solver is easily applied to complicated hyperbolic systems. Finally, as an example, we formulate conservative schemes for the three‐dimensional Euler equations for general compressible materials and give numerical results for a variety of test problems for ideal gases in one and two space dimensions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.