On the relaxation of binary hard-sphere gases

Georg Kügerl and Ferdinand Schürrer

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1992, vol. 190, issue 1, 186-202

Abstract: A spatially homogeneous and isotropic binary gas mixture consisting of hard spheres of different mass is considered. Using the multigroup method, the Boltzmann equation describing this system is solved numerically to examine the Maxwellization of the individual components. In one class of examples, a gas with one very dilute component is considered for various values of the ratio of the particle masses. By this means, the range of validity of some simplifications frequently used in transport theory, such as the ‘heat bath approximation’ which allows a linearization, or the Rayleigh and Lorentz gas approximations are examined. The second example concerns a gas mixture with equal number densities but very different particle masses. Taking δ-peaks as initial distributions, we find that the relaxation of this system is divided into three stages: (i) The relaxation of the distribution function of the light component towards a Maxwellian distribution; (ii) The relaxation of the heavy component; (iii) Convergence of the temperatures of the two subsystems.

Date: 1992
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:190:y:1992:i:1:p:186-202

DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(92)90085-5

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