Transport phenomena in a plane shock wave

With the use of the nonpolynomial closure 1/_z in the Mott-Smith approximation of the solution of the Boltzmann equation, we obtain a value of the density gradient in the limit of a very weak shock wave that is close to the correct value. For the determination of the transverse temperature gradient we calculated the_x²/_z moment of the Mott-Smith collision integral. The effective values of viscosity and thermal conductivity in the limit of a very weak shock wave were calculated for inverse-power potentials and found to agree almost exactly with the Chapman-Enskog values. Such a comparison can serve as a criterion for the evaluation of different bimodal theories. Various bimodal theories give different values of viscosity and thermal conductivity, but all of them give 33 % too high a value of the Eucken ratio.