Asymptotic and Invariant-Domain Preserving Schemes for Scalar Conservation Equations with Stiff Source Terms and Multiple Equilibrium Points

We propose an operator-splitting scheme to approximate scalar conservation equations with stiff source terms having multiple (at least two) stable equilibrium points. The scheme combines a (reaction-free) transport substep followed by a (transport-free) reaction substep. The transport substep is approximated using the forward Euler method with continuous finite elements and graph viscosity. The reaction substep is approximated using an exponential integrator. The crucial idea of the paper is to use a mesh-dependent cutoff of the reaction time-scale in the reaction substep. We establish a bound on the entropy residual motivating the design of the scheme. We show that the proposed scheme is invariant-domain preserving under the same CFL restriction on the time step as in the nonreactive case. Numerical experiments in one and two space dimensions using linear, convex, and nonconvex fluxes with smooth and nonsmooth initial data in various regimes show that the proposed scheme is asymptotic preserving.