We prove that for the two-dimensional steady complete compressible Euler system, with given uniform upcoming supersonic flows, the following three fundamental flow patterns (special solutions) in gas dynamics involving transonic shocks are all unique
in the class of piecewise $C^1$ smooth functions, under appropriate conditions on the downstream subsonic flows: $(rmnum{1})$ the normal transonic shocks in a straight duct with finite or infinite length, after fixing a point the shock-front passing through; $(rmnum{2})$ the oblique transonic shocks attached to an infinite wedge; $(rmnum{3})$ a flat Mach configuration containing one supersonic shock, two transonic shocks, and a contact discontinuity, after fixing the point the four discontinuities intersect. These special solutions are constructed traditionally under the assumption that they are piecewise constant, and they have played important roles in the studies of mathematical gas dynamics. Our results show that the assumption of piecewise constant can be replaced by some more weaker assumptions on the downstream subsonic flows, which are sufficient to uniquely determine these special solutions. Mathematically, these are uniqueness results on solutions of free boundary problems of a quasi-linear system of elliptic-hyperbolic composite-mixed type in bounded or unbounded planar domains, without any assumptions on smallness. The proof relies on an elliptic system of pressure $p$ and the tangent of the flow angle $w=v/u$ obtained by decomposition of the Euler system in Lagrangian coordinates, and a newly developed method for the $L^{infty}$ estimate that is independent of the free boundaries, by combining the maximum principles of elliptic equations, and careful analysis of shock polar applied on the (maybe curved) shock-fronts.
For an upstream supersonic flow past a straight-sided cone in $R^3$ whose vertex angle is less than the critical angle, a transonic (supersonic-subsonic) shock-front attached to the cone vertex can be formed in the flow. In this paper we analyze the
stability of transonic shock-fronts in three-dimensional steady potential flow past a perturbed cone. We establish that the self-similar transonic shock-front solution is conditionally stable in structure with respect to the conical perturbation of the cone boundary and the upstream flow in appropriate function spaces. In particular, it is proved that the slope of the shock-front tends asymptotically to the slope of the unperturbed self-similar shock-front downstream at infinity.
