The Application of Discontinuous Galerkin Space and Velocity Discretization to Model Kinetic Equations

An approach based on a discontinuous Galerkin discretization is proposed for the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook model kinetic equation. This approach allows for a high order polynomial approximation of molecular velocity distribution function both in spatial and velocity variables. It is applied to model normal shock wave and heat transfer problems. Convergence of solutions with respect to the number of spatial cells and velocity bins is studied, with the degree of polynomial approximation ranging from zero to four in the physical space variable and from zero to eight in the velocity variable. This approach is found to conserve mass, momentum and energy when high degree polynomial approximations are used in the velocity space. For the shock wave problem, the solution is shown to exhibit accelerated convergence with respect to the velocity variable. Convergence with respect to the spatial variable is in agreement with the order of the polynomial approximation used. For the heat transfer problem, it was observed that convergence of solutions obtained by high degree polynomial approximations is only second order with respect to the resolution in the spatial variable. This is attributed to the temperature jump at the wall in the solutions. The shock wave and heat transfer solutions are in excellent agreement with the solutions obtained by a conservative finite volume scheme.