A relaxation scheme for conservation laws with a discontinuous coefficient

We study a relaxation scheme of the Jin and Xin type for conservation laws with a flux function that depends discontinuously on the spatial location through a coefficient k(x). If k ∈ BV , we show that the relaxation scheme produces a sequence of approximate solutions that converge to a weak solution. The Murat-Tartar compensated compactness method is used to establish convergence. We present numerical experiments with the relaxation scheme, and comparisons are made with a front tracking scheme based on an exact 2× 2 Riemann solver.