A numerical comparison of the Lax-Wendroff discontinuous Galerkin method based on different numerical fluxes

Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method is a spatial discretization procedure, employing useful features from high-resolution finite volume schemes, such as the exact or approximate Riemann solvers serving as numerical fluxes and limiters. In [(2005). Comput. Methods Appl. Mech. Eng. 194, 4528], we developed a Lax-Wendroff time discretization procedure for the DG method (LWDG), an alternative method for time discretization to the popular total variation diminishing (TVD) Runge-Kutta time discretizations. In most of the DG papers in the literature, the Lax-Friedrichs numerical flux is used due to its simplicity, although there are many other numerical fluxes, which could also be used. In this paper, we systematically investigate the performance of the LWDG method based on different numerical fluxes, including the first-order monotone fluxes such as the Godunov flux, the Engquist-Osher flux, etc., the second-order TVD fluxes and generalized Riemann solver, with the objective of obtaining better performance by choosing suitable numerical fluxes. The detailed numerical study is mainly performed for the one-dimensional system case, addressing the issues of CPU cost, accuracy, non-oscillatory property, and resolution of discontinuities. Numerical tests are also performed for two-dimensional systems.