Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2011
In this paper some special entropy–entropy flux pairs of Lax type are constructed for nonlinear hyperbolic systems of types (1.1) and (1.2), in which the progression terms are functions of a single variable. The necessary estimates for the major terms are obtained by the use of singular perturbation theory. The special entropies provide a convergence theorem in the strong topology for the artificial viscosity method when applied to the Cauchy problems (1.1), (1.3) and (1.2), (1.3) and used together with the theory of compensated compactness.