Compressible Flow and Transonic Shock in a Diverging Nozzle

The paper is devoted to the study of compressible flows and transonic shocks in diverging nozzles in the framework of the full compressible Euler system. Consider a nozzle having a shape as a diverging truncated sector with generic opening angle: if the upstream flow at the entrance is supersonic and is near to an axial symmetric flow, and if all parameters of the upstream flow and the receiver pressure at the exit are suitably assigned, then a transonic shock appears in the nozzle. To determine the transonic shock and the flow in the nozzle leads to a free boundary value problem for a nonlinear partial differential equation. We prove that the receiver pressure can uniquely determine the location of the transonic shock, as well as the flow behind the shock. Such a conclusion was conjectured by Courant and Friedrichs, and is confirmed theoretically in this paper for the divergent nozzles.