Steady supersonic flow past an almost straight wedge with large vertex angle

This paper studies the problem on the steady supersonic flow at the constant speed past an almost straight wedge with a piecewise smooth boundary. It is well known that if each vertex angle of the straight wedge is less than an extreme angle determined by the shock polar, the shock wave is attached to the tip of the wedge and constant states on both side of the shock are supersonic. This paper is devoted to generalizing this result. Under the hypotheses that each vertex angle is less than the extreme angle and the total variation of tangent angle along each edge is sufficiently small, a sequence of approximate solutions constructed by a modified Glimm scheme is proved to be convergent to a global weak solution of the steady problem. A sequence of the corresponding approximate leading shock fronts issuing from the tip is shown to be convergent to the leading shock front of the obtained solution. The regularity of the leading shock front is established and the asymptotic behaviour of the obtained solution at infinity is also studied. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.