A new method to incorporate internal energy into a discrete velocity Monte Carlo Boltzmann Equation solver

A new method has been developed to incorporate particles with internal structure into the framework of the Variance Reduction method [17] for solving the discrete velocity Boltzmann Equation. Internal structure in the present context refers to physical phenomena like rotation and vibration of molecules consisting of two or more atoms. A gas in equilibrium has all modes of internal energy at the same temperature as the translational temperature. If the gas is in a non-equilibrium state, translational temperature and internal temperatures tend to proceed towards an equilibrium state during equilibration, but they all do so at different relaxation rates. In this thesis, rotational energy of a distribution of molecules is modeled as a single value at a point in a discrete velocity space; this represents the average rotational energy of molecules at that specific velocity. Inelastic collisions are the sole mechanism of translational and rotational energy exchange, and are governed by a modified Landau-Teller equation. The method is tested for heat bath simulations, or homogeneous relaxations, and one dimensional shock problems. Homogeneous relaxations demonstrate that the rotational and translational temperatures equilibrate to the correct final temperature, which can be predicted by conservation of energy. Moreover, the rates of relaxation agree with the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method with internal energy for the same input parameters. Using a fourth order method for convecting mass along with its corresponding internal energy, a one dimensional Mach 1.71 normal shock is simulated. Once the translational and rotational temperatures equilibrate downstream, the temperature, density and velocity, predicted by the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions, are obtained to within an error of 0.5%. The result is compared to a normal shock with the same upstream flow properties generated by the DSMC method. Internal vibrational energy and a method to use Larsen Borgnakke statistical sampling for inelastic collisions is formulated in this text and prepared in the code, but remains to be tested.