Vanishing Viscosity Limit of the Compressible Navier–Stokes Equations for Solutions to a Riemann Problem

We study the vanishing viscosity limit of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations to the Riemann solution of the Euler equations that consists of the superposition of a shock wave and a rarefaction wave. In particular, it is shown that there exists a family of smooth solutions to the compressible Navier–Stokes equations that converges to the Riemann solution away from the initial and shock layers at a rate in terms of the viscosity and the heat conductivity coefficients. This gives the first mathematical justification of this limit for the Navier–Stokes equations to the Riemann solution that contains these two typical nonlinear hyperbolic waves.