New solutions for the one-dimensional nonconservative inviscid Burgers equation

The propagation of travelling waves is a relevant physical phenomenon. As usual the understanding of a real propagating wave depends upon a correct formulation of a idealized model. Discontinuous functions, Dirac-δ measures and their distributional derivatives are, respectively, idealizations of sharp jumps, localized high peaks and single sharp localised oscillations. In the present paper we study the propagation of distributional travelling waves for Burgers inviscid equation. This will be afforded by our theory of distributional products, and is based on a rigorous and consistent concept of solution we have introduced in [C.O.R. Sarrico, Distributional products and global solutions for nonconservative inviscid Burgers equation, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 281 (2003) 641–656]. Our approach exhibit Dirac-δ travelling solitons (they are just the “infinitesimal narrow solitons” of Maslov, Omel’yanov and Tsupin [V.P. Maslov, O.A. Omel’yanov, Asymptotic soliton-form solutions of equations with small dispersion, Russian Math. Surveys 36 (1981) 73–149; V.P. Maslov, V.A. Tsupin, Necessary conditions for the existence of infinitely narrow solitons in gas dynamics, Soviet Phys. Dokl. 24 (1979) 354–356]) and also solutions which are not measures such as for instance u(x, t) = b + δ (x − bt), a wave of constant speed b. Moreover, for signals with two jump discontinuities we have, in our setting, the propagation of more solitons and more values for the signal speed are allowed than those afforded within classical framework. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.