Particle Methods for the Boltzmann Equation

Abstract

In the following chapters we will discuss particle methods for the numerical simulation of rarefied gas flows.We will mainly treat a billiard game, that is, our particles will be hard spheres. But we will also touch upon cases where particles have internal energies due to rotation or vibration, which they exchange in a collision, and we will talk about chemical reactions happening during a collision.Due to the limited size of this paper, we are only able to mention the principles of these real-gas effects. On the other hand, the general concepts of particle methods to be presented may be used for other kinds of kinetic equations, such as the semiconductor device simulation. We leave this part of the research to subsequent papers.