An Assessment of Semi-Discrete Central Schemes for Hyperbolic Conservation Laws

High-resolution finite volume methods for solving systems of conservation laws have been widely embraced in research areas ranging from astrophysics to geophysics and aero-thermodynamics. These methods are typically at least second-order accurate in space and time, deliver non-oscillatory solutions in the presence of near discontinuities, e.g., shocks, and introduce minimal dispersive and diffusive effects. High-resolution methods promise to provide greatly enhanced solution methods for Sandia’s mainstream shock hydrodynamics and compressible flow applications, and they admit the possibility of a generalized framework for treating multi-physics problems such as the coupled hydrodynamics, electro-magnetics and radiative transport found in zpinch physics. In this work, we describe initial efforts to develop a generalized “black-box” conservation law framework based on modern high-resolution methods and implemented in an object-oriented software framework. The framework is based on the solution of systems of general non-linear hyperbolic conservation laws using Godunov-type central schemes. In our initial