Transport in Porous Media, Vol.114, No.2, 309-340, 2016
Non-monotonic Travelling Wave Fronts in a System of Fractional Flow Equations from Porous Media
Motivated by observations of saturation overshoot, this article investigates generic classes of smooth travelling wave solutions of a system of two coupled nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations resulting from a flux function of high symmetry. All boundary resp. limit value problems of the travelling wave ansatz, which lead to smooth travelling wave solutions, are systematically explored. A complete, visually and computationally useful representation of the five-dimensional manifold connecting wave velocities and boundary resp. limit data is found by using methods from dynamical systems theory. The travelling waves exhibit monotonic, non-monotonic or plateau-shaped behaviour. Special attention is given to the non-monotonic profiles. The stability of the travelling waves is studied by numerically solving the full system of the partial differential equations with an efficient and accurate adaptive moving grid solver.
Keywords:Travelling waves;Saturation overshoot;Porous media;Multiphase flow;(Non-)Monotonicity;Plateau waves