Unconditional instability of inflow dependent boundary conditions in difference approximations to hyperbolic systems

The stability of finite difference approximations to initial boundary hyperbolic systems is studied. As is well known, a proper specification of boundary conditions for such systems is essential for their solutions to be well defined. A discrete analogue of the above is proved - if the numerical boundary conditions are consistent with an inflow part of the problem, they render the overall computation unstable. An example of the inviscid gasdynamics equations is considered.