Kinetic theory of granular gases. (English) Zbl 1155.76386

Brilliantov, Nikolai V.; Pöschel, Thorsten

Oxford Graduate Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-853038-2/hbk). xi, 329 p. (2004).

Publisher’s description: The book provides an introduction to the rapidly developing theory of dissipative gas dynamics as it has been developed mainly during the past decade. The book is aimed at readers from the advanced undergraduate level onwards and leads up to the present state of research. The text is self-contained, in the sense that no mathematical or physical knowledge is required that goes beyond standard undergraduate physics courses. The material is adequate for a one-semester course and contains chapter summaries as well as exercises with detailed solutions (in Appendix 3).
Special emphasis is put on a microscopically consistent description of pairwise particle collisions which leads to an impact-velocity dependent coefficient of restitution. The description of the many-particle system, based on the Boltzmann equation, starts with the derivation of the velocity distribution function, followed by the investigation of self-diffusion and Brownian motion. Using hydrodynamical methods, transport processes and self-organized structure formulation are studied.
The first appendix represents a guide to the systematic calculation of kinetic integrals to obtain coefficients for Sonine polynomial expansions including the used Maple programs. the second gives a brief introduction to event-driven molecular dynamics.
The book is accompanied by a web page where the molecular dynamics program as well as the computer-algebra programs are provided.

MSC:

76M35	Stochastic analysis applied to problems in fluid mechanics
76-01	Introductory exposition (textbooks, tutorial papers, etc.) pertaining to fluid mechanics
82C40	Kinetic theory of gases in time-dependent statistical mechanics
76-04	Software, source code, etc. for problems pertaining to fluid mechanics
76P05	Rarefied gas flows, Boltzmann equation in fluid mechanics
76T25	Granular flows

Software:

Maple