Entropy Inequalities for Evaporation/Condensation Problem in Rarefied Gas Dynamics

The present paper is devoted mainly to the half space problem for stationary Boltzmann-type equations. Using only conservation laws and the Boltzmann H-theorem we derive an inequality for unknown constant fluxes of mass, energy, and momentum. This inequality is expressed in terms of three parameters (pressure p, temperature T and the Mach number M) of the asymptotic Maxwellian at infinity. Geometrically the inequality describes a physical domain with positive entropy production in the 3-d space of the parameters. The domain appears to be qualitatively different for evaporation and condensation problems. We show that for given M, the curve p=p(M), T=T(M) of maximal entropy production practically coincides with the experimental evaporation curve obtained by Sone et al. on the basis of numerical solutions of BGK equation. Similar consideration for the condensation problem is also in qualitative agreement with known numerical results.