Jens Struckmeier

• The system of shallow water waves is one of the classical examples for nonlinear, twodimensional conservation laws. The paper investigates a simple kinetic equation depending on a parameter e which leads for e to 0 to the system of shallow water waves. The corresponding equilibrium distribution function has a compact support which depends on the eigenvalues of the hyperbolic system. It is shown that this kind of kinetic approach is restricted to a special class of nonlinear conservation laws. The kinetic model is used to develop a simple particle method for the numerical solution of shallow water waves. The particle method can be implemented in a straightforward way and produces in test examples sufficiently accurate results.