Developments of entropy-stable residual distribution methods for conservation laws I: Scalar problems

This paper presents preliminary developments of entropy-stable residual distribution methods for scalar problems. Controlling entropy generation is achieved by formulating an entropy conserved signals distribution coupled with an entropy-stable signals distribution. Numerical results of the entropy-stable residual distribution methods are accurate and comparable with the classic residual distribution methods for steady-state problems. High order accurate extensions for the new method on steady-state problems are also demonstrated. Moreover, the new method preserves second order accuracy on unsteady problems using an explicit time integration scheme. The idea of the multi-dimensional entropy-stable residual distribution method is generic enough to be extended to the system of hyperbolic equations, which will be presented in the sequel of this paper.