A new efficient formulation of the HLLEM Riemann solver for general conservative and non-conservative hyperbolic systems

•New simple and general path-conservative formulation of the HLLEM Riemann solver.•Application to general conservative and non-conservative hyperbolic systems.•Inclusion of sub-structure and resolution of intermediate characteristic fields.•Well-balanced for single- and two-layer shallow water equations and multi-phase flows.•Euler equations with real equation of state, MHD equations, nonlinear elasticity.

In this paper a new, simple and universal formulation of the HLLEM Riemann solver (RS) is proposed that works for general conservative and non-conservative systems of hyperbolic equations. For non-conservative PDE, a path-conservative formulation of the HLLEM RS is presented for the first time in this paper. The HLLEM Riemann solver is built on top of a novel and very robust path-conservative HLL method. It thus naturally inherits the positivity properties and the entropy enforcement of the underlying HLL scheme. However, with just the slight additional cost of evaluating eigenvectors and eigenvalues of intermediate characteristic fields, we can represent linearly degenerate intermediate waves with a minimum of smearing.For conservative systems, our paper provides the easiest and most seamless path for taking a pre-existing HLL RS and quickly and effortlessly converting it to a RS that provides improved results, comparable with those of an HLLC, HLLD, Osher or Roe-type RS. This is done with minimal additional computational complexity, making our variant of the HLLEM RS also a very fast RS that can accurately represent linearly degenerate discontinuities. Our present HLLEM RS also transparently extends these advantages to non-conservative systems. For shallow water-type systems, the resulting method is proven to be well-balanced.Several test problems are presented for shallow water-type equations and two-phase flow models, as well as for gas dynamics with real equation of state, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD & RMHD), and nonlinear elasticity.Since our new formulation accommodates multiple intermediate waves and has a broader applicability than the original HLLEM method, it could alternatively be called the HLLI Riemann solver, where the “I” stands for the intermediate characteristic fields that can be accounted for.