CONVERGENCE OF A VECTOR-BGK APPROXIMATION FOR THE INCOMPRESSIBLE NAVIER-STOKES EQUATIONS

We present a rigorous convergence result for smooth solutions to a singular semilinear hyperbolic approximation, called vector-BGK model, to the solutions to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in Sobolev spaces. Our proof deeply relies on the dissipative properties of the system and on the use of an energy which is provided by a symmetrizer, whose entries are weighted in a suitable way with respect to the singular perturbation parameter. This strategy allows us to perform uniform energy estimates and to prove the convergence by compactness.