Multiple temperature model for the information preservation method and its application to nonequilibrium gas flows

The information preservation (IP) method has been successfully applied to various nonequilibrium gas flows. Comparing with the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, the IP method dramatically reduces the statistical scatter by preserving collective information of simulation molecules. In this paper, a multiple temperature model is proposed to extend the IP method to strongly translational nonequilibrium gas flows. The governing equations for the IP quantities have been derived from the Boltzmann equation based on an assumption that each simulation molecule represents a Gaussian distribution function with a second-order temperature tensor. According to the governing equations, the implementation of IP method is divided into three steps: molecular movement, molecular collision, and update step. With a reasonable multiple temperature collision model and the flux splitting method in the update step, the transport of IP quantities can be accurately modeled. We apply the IP method with the multiple temperature model to shear-driven Couette flow, external force-driven Poiseuille flow and thermal creep flow, respectively. In the former two cases, the separation of different temperature components is clearly observed in the transition regime, and the velocity, temperature and pressure distributions are also well captured. The thermal creep flow, resulting from the presence of temperature gradients along boundary walls, is properly simulated. All of the IP results compare well with the corresponding DSMC results, whereas the IP method uses much smaller sampling sizes than the DSMC method. This paper shows that the IP method with the multiple temperature model is an accurate and efficient tool to simulate strongly translational nonequilibrium gas flows.