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Note on Divergence of the Chapman-Enskog Expansion for Solving Boltzmann Equation

General Physics 2018-09-03 v1

Abstract

Within about a year (1916-1917) Chapman and Enskog independently proposed an important expansion for solving the Boltzmann equation. However, the expansion is divergent or indeterminant in the case of relaxation time τ1\tau \geq 1. Even since this divergence problem has puzzled this subject for a century. By using a modified M\"obius series inversion formula, this paper proposes a modified Chapman-Enskog expansion with a variable upper limit of the summation. The new expansion can give not only a convergent summation but also provide the best-so-far explanation on some unbelievable scenarios occurred in previous practice.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.10739,
  title  = {Note on Divergence of the Chapman-Enskog Expansion for Solving Boltzmann Equation},
  author = {Nanxian Chen and Bohua Sun},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.10739},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

4 pages, 0 figures, 2 tables