Well-balanced high order extensions of Godunov's method for semilinear balance laws

This paper is concerned with the development of well-balanced high order numerical schemes for systems of balance laws with a linear flux function, whose coefficients may be variable. First, well-balanced first order numerical schemes are obtained based on the use of exact solvers of Riemann problems that include both the flux and the source terms. Godunov's methods so obtained are extended to higher order schemes by using a technique of reconstruction of states. The main contribution of this paper is to introduce a reconstruction technique that preserves the well-balanced property of Godunov's methods. Some numerical experiments are presented to verify in practice the properties of the developed numerical schemes.