On the rigid-lid approximation of shallow water Bingham

Abstract

This paper discusses the well posedness of an initial value problem describing the motion of a Bingham fluid in a basin with a degenerate bottom topography. A physical interpretation of such motion is discussed. The system governing such motion is obtained from the Shallow Water-Bingham models in the regime where the Froude number degenerates, i.e taking the limit of such equations as the Froude number tends to zero. Since we are considering equations with degenerate coefficients, then we shall work with weighted Sobolev spaces in order to establish the existence of a weak solution. In order to overcome the difficulty of the discontinuity in Bingham's constitutive law, we follow a similar approach to that introduced in [G. Duvaut and J.-L. Lions, Springer-Verlag, 1976]. We study also the behavior of this solution when the yield limit vanishes. Finally, a numerical scheme for the system in 1D is furnished.