An Integro-Differential Conservation Law arising in a Model of Granular Flow

Abstract: We study a scalar integro-differential conservation law. The equation was first derived in [2] as the slow erosion limit of granular flow. Considering a set of more general erosion functions, we study the initial boundary value problem for which one can not adapt the standard theory of conservation laws. We construct approximate solutions with a fractional step method, by recomputing the integral term at each time step. A-priori L^\infty bounds and BV estimates yield convergence and global existence of BV solutions. Furthermore, we present a well-posedness analysis, showing that the solutions are stable in L^1 with respect to the initial data.