Seminars

I present a quasi-particle approach to solving the Boltzmann equation that is complementary to the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. The method, which uses Monte Carlo techniques to compute the collision integral for a set of discrete velocities, can be viewed as conducting simulations with fixed velocity, variable mass particles in contrast to DSMC that uses fixed mass, variable velocity particles. I will describe applications of the technique to representative 1- and 2-D flows to illustrate the power of the technique to provide solutions with small statistical fluctuations, solve transient problems with very large density variations, and include quantized internal energy states.