Generalized wavefront expansion. II. The propagation of step shocks (Q1093463)

[For part I, see the authors, ibid. 8, 243-258 (1986; Zbl 0609.76066).] The concept of step shock for a system of conservation laws is introduced. It generalizes the plane constant shock solution to the propagation into a slowly varying medium and to the multi-dimensional case. A transport equation which describes the propagation for short times is derived, and a scheme is shown for deriving the Taylor expansion in time of the shock solution.