Analysis Of The Boltzmann Equation

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In classical fluid dynamics, the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible viscous fluids and its special (limiting) case the Euler equations for inviscid fluids are sets of non-linear partial differential equations that describes the spatiotemporal evolution of a fluid (gas). Both equations are derived from conservative principles and they model the behavior of some macroscopic variables namely: mass density, velocity and temperature.
The evolution of a fluid (gas) can also be described by the exact dynamics of the individual particles that constitutes the fluid (gas) in terms of Newton equations. However, this is complicated in the sense that in order to compute the time evolution of the fluid, one will have to solve a system of 6N first order differential equations with 6N unknowns constituting the position and velocity vectors. A perquisite for this computation is the knowledge of 6N initial …show more content…

The Boltzmann equation provides a connection between the Newton equations and the spatiotemporal evolution of the macroscopic properties of a gas. In other words, the Boltzmann equation lies in between the two cases described above.
The Boltzmann equation is a nonlinear integro-differential equation and it describes the evolution of the density of particles (molecules) in a monatomic rarefied gas. It utilizes the fact that free streaming and collisions are the mechanisms responsible for the increase or decrease of particles in a given domain (small volume) of a fluid.
The range of application of the original Boltzmann equation has grown way beyond just dealing with a rarefied gas with one constituent and as a result, several generalizations of the Boltzmann equation have been developed and this includes the reactive Boltzmann

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