Central Schemes for Nonconservative Hyperbolic Systems

In this work we present a new approach to the construction of high order finite volume central schemes on staggered grids for general hyperbolic systems, including those not admitting a conservation form. The method is based on finite volume space discretization on staggered cells, central Runge-Kutta time discretization, and integration over a family of paths, associated to the system itself, for the generalization of the method to nonconservative systems. Applications to the one and the two layers shallow water models as prototypes of systems of balance laws and systems with source terms and nonconservative products respectively, will be illustrated.