Concentration and cavitation in the vanishing pressure limit of solutions to a 3 × 3 generalized Chaplygin gas equations

The phenomena of concentration and cavitation are identified and analyzed by studying the vanishing pressure limit of solutions to the 3×3 isentropic compressible Euler equations for generalized Chaplygin gas (GCG) with a small parameter. It is rigorously proved that, any Riemann solution containing two shocks and possibly one-contact-discontinuity of the GCG equations converges to a delta-shock solution of the same system as the parameter decreases to a certain critical value. Moreover, as the parameter goes to zero, that is, the pressure vanishes, the limiting solution is just the delta-shock solution of the pressureless gas dynamics (PGD) model, and the intermediate density between the two shocks tends to a weighted δ -measure that forms the delta shock wave; any Riemann solution containing two rarefaction waves and possibly one contact-discontinuity tends to a two-contact-discontinuity solution of the PGD model, and the nonvacuum intermediate state in between tends to a vacuum state. Finally, some numerical results are presented to exhibit the processes of concentration and cavitation as the pressure decreases.