Polynomial interpolation of Burgers' equation with randomness

Qin Li, Jian-Guo Liu, Ruiwen Shu

Published 2017-08-14Version 1

Generalized polynomial chaos (gPC) has been extensively used in uncertainty quantification problems to handle random variables. For gPC to be valid, one requires high regularity on the random space that hyperbolic type problems usually cannot provide, and thus it is believed to behave poorly in those systems. We provide a counter-argument in this paper, and show that despite the solution profile itself develops singularities in the random space, which prevents the use of gPC, the physical quantities such as shock emergence time, shock location, and shock width are all smooth functions of random variables in the initial data: with proper shifting, the solution's polynomial interpolation approximates with high accuracy. The studies were inspired by the stability results from hyperbolic systems. We use the Burgers' equation as an example for thorough analysis, and the analysis could be extended to general conservation laws with convex fluxes.