METHOD OF HYPERBOLIC SYSTEMS WITH STIFF RELAXATION

Three methods are analyzed for solving a linear hyperbolic system that contains stiff relaxation. We show that the semi-discrete discontinuous Galerkin method, with a linear basis, is accurate when the relaxation time is unresolved (asymptotically preserving--AP). A recently developed central method is shown to be non-AP. To discriminate between AP and non-AP methods, we argue that one must study problems that are diffusion dominated