Stability properties and dynamics of solutions to viscous conservation laws with mean curvature operator

In this paper we study the long time dynamics of the solutions to the initial-boundary value problem for a scalar conservation law with a saturating nonlinear diffusion. After discussing the existence of a unique stationary solution and its asymptotic stability, we focus our attention on the phenomenon of ‘metastability’, whereby the time-dependent solution develops into a layered function in a relatively short time, and subsequently approaches a steady state in a very long time interval. Numerical simulations illustrate the results.