The Enskog Equation for Confined Elastic Hard Spheres

A kinetic equation for a system of elastic hard spheres or disks confined by a hard wall of arbitrary shape is derived. It is a generalization of the modified Enskog equation in which the effects of the confinement are taken into account and it is supposed to be valid up to moderate densities. From the equation, balance equations for the hydrodynamic fields are derived, identifying the collisional transfer contributions to the pressure tensor and heat flux. A Lyapunov functional, \({\mathcal {H}}f]\), is identified. For any solution of the kinetic equation, \({\mathcal {H}}\) decays monotonically in time until the system reaches the inhomogeneous equilibrium distribution, that is a Maxwellian distribution with a density field consistent with equilibrium statistical mechanics.