Convergence Rate to Stationary Solutions for Boltzmann Equation with External Force

For the Boltzmann equation with an external force in the form of the gradient of a potential function in space variable, the stability of its stationary solutions as local Maxwellians was studied by S. Ukai et al. (2005) through the energy method. Based on this stability analysis and some techniques on analyzing the convergence rates to stationary solutions for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, in this paper, we study the convergence rate to the above stationary solutions for the Boltzmann equation which is a fundamental equation in statistical physics for non-equilibrium rarefied gas. By combining the dissipation from the viscosity and heat conductivity on the fluid components and the dissipation on the non-fluid component through the celebrated H-theorem, a convergence rate of the same order as the one for the compressible Navier-Stokes is obtained by constructing some energy functionals.     

A system of parabolic equations in nonequilibrium thermodynamics including thermal and electrical effects

The time-dependent equations for a charged gas or fluid consisting of several components, exposed to an electric field, are considered. These equations form a system of strongly coupled, quasilinear parabolic equations which in some situations can be derived from the Boltzmann equation. The model uses the duality between the thermodynamic fluxes and the thermodynamic forces. Physically motivated mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary conditions and initial conditions are prescribed.The existence of weak solutions is proven. The key of the proof is (i) a transformation of the problem by using the entropic variables, or electro-chemical potentials, which symmetrizes the equations, and (ii) a priori estimates obtained by using the entropy function. Finally, the entropy inequality is employed to show the convergence of the solutions to the thermal equilibrium state as the time tends to infinity.     

Asymptotic behavior and decay rate estimates for a class of semilinear evolution equations of mixed order

In this article we present a unified approach to study the asymptotic behavior and the decay rate to a steady state of bounded weak solutions of nonlinear, gradient-like evolution equations of mixed first and second order. The proof of convergence is based on the Lojasiewicz-Simon inequality, the construction of an appropriate Lyapunov functional, and some differential inequalities. Applications are given to nonautonomous semilinear wave and heat equations with dissipative, dynamical boundary conditions, a nonlinear hyperbolic-parabolic partial differential equation, a damped wave equation and some coupled system.     

Hypocoercivity of the relativistic Boltzmann and Landau equations in the whole space

We study the hypocoercivity property for some kinetic equations in the whole space and obtain the optimal convergence rates of solutions to the equilibrium state in some function spaces. The analysis relies on the basic energy method and the compensating function introduced by Kawashima to the classical Boltzmann equation and developed by Glassey and Strauss in the relativistic setting. It is also motivated by the recent work (Duan et al., 2008 [8]) on the Boltzmann equation by combining the spectrum analysis and energy method. The advantage of the method introduced in this paper is that it can be applied to some complicated system whose detailed spectrum is not known. In fact, only some estimates through the Fourier transform on the conservative transport operator and the dissipation of the linearized operator on the subspace orthogonal to the collision invariants are needed.     

Decay of Dissipative Equations and Negative Sobolev Spaces

We develop a general energy method for proving the optimal time decay rates of the solutions to the dissipative equations in the whole space. Our method is applied to classical examples such as the heat equation, the compressible Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation. In particular, the optimal decay rates of the higher-order spatial derivatives of solutions are obtained. The negative Sobolev norms are shown to be preserved along time evolution and enhance the decay rates. We use a family of scaled energy estimates with minimum derivative counts and interpolations among them without linear decay analysis.     

Convergence to rarefaction waves for the nonlinear Boltzmann equation and compressible Navier-Stokes equations

The main purpose of this paper is to study the asymptotic equivalence of the Boltzmann equation for the hard-sphere collision model to its corresponding Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics in the limit of small mean free path. When the fluid flow is a smooth rarefaction (or centered rarefaction) wave with finite strength, the corresponding Boltzmann solution exists globally in time, and the solution converges to the rarefaction wave uniformly for all time (or away from t=0) as ?→0. A decomposition of a Boltzmann solution into its macroscopic (fluid) part and microscopic (kinetic) part is adopted to rewrite the Boltzmann equation in a form of compressible Navier-Stokes equations with source terms. In this setting, the same asymptotic equivalence of the full compressible Navier-Stokes equations to its corresponding Euler equations in the limit of small viscosity and heat conductivity (depending on the viscosity) is also obtained.     

The impact of finite precision arithmetic and sensitivity on the numerical solution of partial differential equations

In this paper, we address some fundamental issues concerning “time marching” numerical schemes for computing steady state solutions of boundary value problems for nonlinear partial differential equations. Simple examples are used to illustrate that even theoretically convergent schemes can produce numerical steady state solutions that do not correspond to steady state solutions of the boundary value problem. This phenomenon must be considered in any computational study of nonunique solutions to partial differential equations that govern physical systems such as fluid flows. In particular, numerical calculations have been used to “suggest” that certain Euler equations do not have a unique solution. For Burgers' equation on a finite spatial interval with Neumann boundary conditions the only steady state solutions are constant (in space) functions. Moreover, according to recent theoretical results, for any initial condition the corresponding solution to Burgers' equation must converge to a constant as t → ∞. However, we present a convergent finite difference scheme that produces false nonconstant numerical steady state “solutions.” These erroneous solutions arise out of the necessary finite floating point arithmetic inherent in every digital computer. We suggest the resulting numerical steady state solution may be viewed as a solution to a “nearby” boundary value problem with high sensitivity to changes in the boundary conditions. Finally, we close with some comments on the relevance of this paper to some recent “numerical based proofs” of the existence of nonunique solutions to Euler equations and to aerodynamic design.     

Macroscopic regularity for the Boltzmann equation

The regularity of solutions to the Boltzmann equation is a fundamental problem in the kinetic theory. In this paper, the case with angular cut-off is investigated. It is shown that the macroscopic parts of solutions to the Boltzmann equation, i.e., the density, momentum and total energy are continuous functions of(x, t) in the region R3×(0, +∞). More precisely, these macroscopic quantities immediately become continuous in any positive time even though they are initially discontinuous and the discontinuities of solutions propagate only in the microscopic level. It should be noted that such kind of phenomenon can not happen for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations in which the initial discontinuities of the density never vanish in any finite time, see [22]. This hints that the Boltzmann equation has better regularity effect in the macroscopic level than compressible Navier-Stokes equations.     

Stability of contact discontinuity for the Boltzmann equation

The Boltzmann equation which describes the time evolution of a large number of particles through the binary collision in statistics physics has close relation to the systems of fluid dynamics, that is, Euler equations and Navier-Stokes equations. As for a basic wave pattern to Euler equations, we consider the nonlinear stability of contact discontinuities to the Boltzmann equation. Even though the stability of the other two nonlinear waves, i.e., shocks and rarefaction waves has been extensively studied, there are few stability results on the contact discontinuity because unlike shock waves and rarefaction waves, its derivative has no definite sign, and decays slower than a rarefaction wave. Moreover, it behaves like a linear wave in a nonlinear setting so that its coupling with other nonlinear waves reveals a complicated interaction mechanism. Based on the new definition of contact waves to the Boltzmann equation corresponding to the contact discontinuities for the Euler equations, we succeed in obtaining the time asymptotic stability of this wave pattern with a convergence rate. In our analysis, an intrinsic dissipative mechanism associated with this profile is found and used for closing the energy estimates.     

Homogenization for semilinear hyperbolic systems with oscillatory data

The behavior of multi-dimensional discrete Boltzmann systems with highly oscillatory data is studied. Homogenized equations for the mean solutions are obtained. Uniform convergence of the oscillatory solutions of the discrete Boltzmann equations to the solutions of the corresponding homogenized equations is established. Moreover, we find that the weak limits of the oscillatory solutions for a model of Broadwell type are not continuous functions of the discrete velocities. Generalization of the above results to problems with multiple-scale initial data is also established.     

Singular behavior of vacuum states for compressible fluids

In this survey paper, we will present the recent work on the study of the compressible fluids with vacuum states by illustrating its interesting and singular behavior through some systems of fluid dynamics, that is, Euler equations, Euler–Poisson equations and Navier–Stokes equations. The main concern is the well-posedness of the problem when vacuum presents and the singular behavior of the solution near the interface separating the vacuum and the gas. Furthermore, the relation of the solutions for the gas dynamics with vacuum to those of the Boltzmann equation will also be discussed. In fact, the results obtained so far for vacuum states are far from being complete and satisfactory. Therefore, this paper can only be served as an introduction to this interesting field which has many open and challenging mathematical problems. Moreover, the problems considered here are limited to the author's interest and knowledge in this area.     

The fluid-dynamic limit of the Broadwell model of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation in the presence of shocks

This paper studies the asymptotic equivalence of the Broadwell model of the nonlinear Boltzmann equation to its corresponding Euler equation of compressible gas dynamics in the limit of small mean free path ε. It is shown that the fluid dynamical approximation is valid even if there are shocks in the fluid flow, although there are thin shock layers in which the convergence does not hold. More precisely, by assuming that the fluid solution is piecewise smooth with a finite number of noninteracting shocks and suitably small oscillations, we can show that there exist solutions to the Broadwell equations such that the Broadwell solutions converge to the fluid dynamical solutions away from the shocks at a rate of order (ε) as the mean free path ε goes to zero. For the proof, we first construct a formal solution for the Broadwell equation by matching the truncated Hilbert expansion and shock layer expansion. Then the existence of Broadwell solutions and its convergence to the fluid dynamic solution is reduced to the stability analysis for the approximate solution. We use an energy method which makes full use of the inner structure of time dependent shock profiles for the Broadwell equations.     

Multi-grid methods for stokes and navier-stokes equations

Summary In the present paper we introduce transforming iterations, an approach to construct smoothers for indefinite systems. This turns out to be a convenient tool to classify several well-known smoothing iterations for Stokes and Navier-Stokes equations and to predict their convergence behaviour, epecially in the case of high Reynolds-numbers. Using this approach, we are able to construct a new smoother for the Navier-Stokes equations, based on incomplete LU-decompositions, yielding a highly effective and robust multi-grid method. Besides some qualitative theoretical convergence results, we give large numerical comparisons and tests for the Stokes as well as for the Navier-Stokes equations. For a general convergence theory we refer to [29].This work was supported in part by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft     

Propagation of socillations in the Solutions of 1-D Compressible Fluid Equations

We study the propagation of initial osillations in the solutions of one-dimensional inviscid gas dynamic equations and the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Using Multiple scale analysis, we derivbe the homogenized equations which take the form of n averaged system coupled with a dynamic cell-problem. We prove rigorous error estimates to justify the validity of these equations. We also show that the weak limits of the osicllatory solytions satisfy gas dynamic equations with an equation of state depeding on the microstructurer of the inital data     

A BGK Model for Gas Mixtures

The aim of this article is to construct a BGK operator for gas mixtures starting from the true Navier-Stokes equations. That is the ones having transport coefficients given by the hydrodynamical limit of the Boltzmann equation(s). Here the same hydrodynamical limit is obtained by introducing relaxation coefficients on certain moments of the distribution functions. Next the whole model is set by using entropy minimization under moments constraints. In our case the BGK operator allows to recover the exact Fick and Newton laws and satisfy the fundamental properties of the Boltzmann equations for inert gas mixtures.     

Convergence to steady state of solutions of the euler equations,I

In this paper we analyze the convergence to steady state of solutions of the compressible and the incompressible isentropic Euler equations in two space dimensions. In the compressible case, the original equations do not converge. We replace the equation of continuity with an elliptic equation for the density, obtaining a new set of equations, which have the same steady solution. In the incompressible case, the equation of continuity is replaced by a Poisson equation for the pressure. In both cases, we linearize the equations around a steady solution and show that the unsteady solution of the linearized equations converges to the steady solution, if the steady solution is sufficiently smooth. In the proof we consider how the energy of the time dependent part developes with time, and find that it decrease exponentially.     

Finite difference scheme based on proper orthogonal decomposition for the nonstationary Navier-Stokes equations

The proper orthogonal decomposition(POD)and the singular value decomposition(SVD) are used to study the finite difference scheme(FDS)for the nonstationary Navier-Stokes equations. Ensembles of data are compiled from the transient solutions computed from the discrete equation system derived from the FDS for the nonstationary Navier-Stokes equations.The optimal orthogonal bases are reconstructed by the elements of the ensemble with POD and SVD.Combining the above procedures with a Galerkin projection approach yields a new optimizing FDS model with lower dimensions and a high accuracy for the nonstationary Navier-Stokes equations.The errors between POD approximate solutions and FDS solutions are analyzed.It is shown by considering the results obtained for numerical simulations of cavity flows that the error between POD approximate solution and FDS solution is consistent with theoretical results.Moreover,it is also shown that this validates the feasibility and efficiency of POD method.     

Hydrodynamic limits with shock waves of the Boltzmann equation

We show that piecewise smooth solutions with shocks of the Euler equations in gas dynamics can be obtained as the zero Knudsen number limit of solutions of the Boltzmann equation for hard sphere collision model. The construction of the Boltzmann solutions is done in two steps. First we introduce a generalized Hilbert expansion with shock layer correction to construct approximations to the solutions of the Boltzmann equations with small Knudsen numbers. We then apply the recently developed macro‐micro decomposition and energy method for Boltzmann shock layers to construct the exact Boltzmann solutions through the stability analysis. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A multigrid upwind strategy for accelerating steady‐state computations of waves propagating with curvature‐dependent speeds

A multigrid strategy using upwind finite differencing is developed for accelerating the steady state computations of waves, [14] propagating with curvature‐dependent speeds. This will allow the rapid computation of a “burn table.” In a high explosive material, a burn table will allow the elimination of solving chemical reaction ODEs by feeding in source terms to the reactive flow equations for solution of the system of ignition of the high explosive material. Standard iterative methods show a quick reduction of the residual followed by a slow final convergence to the solution at high iterations. Such systems, including a nonlinear system such as this, are excellent choices for the use of multigrid methods to speed up convergence. Numerical steady‐state solutions to the eikonal equation on several test grids are conducted. Results are presented for these cases in 2D and a cubic grid in 3D using a Runge‐Kutta time iteration for the smoothing operator until steady state is reached. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 18: 179–192, 2002; DOI 10.1002/num.1002