Transonic shocks for steady Euler flows with cylindrical symmetry

In this paper, we prove the existence of transonic shocks adjacent to a uniform one for the full Euler system for steady compressible fluids with cylindrical symmetry in a cylinder, and consequently show the stability of such uniform transonic shocks. Mathematically we solve a free boundary problem for a quasi-linear elliptic-hyperbolic composite system. This reveals that the boundary conditions and equations interact in a subtle way. The key point is to "separate" in a suitable way the elliptic and hyperbolic parts of the system. The approach developed here can be applied to deal with certain multidimensional problems concerning stability of transonic shocks for the full Euler system. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.