2003/02/28 by Francois Coppex, François Coppex, Michel Droz +3 · 2 citations
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Gas Dynamics and Kinetic Theory #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0378-4371(03)00593-4
published as Physica A 329/1-2, 114-226 (2003) · 9 pages, 8 eps figures included
arxiv created 2003/05/22 · openalex publication_date 2003/07/16 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We consider the velocity distribution for a granular gas of inelastic hard spheres described by the Boltzmann equation. We investigate both the free of forcing case and a system heated by a stochastic force. We propose a new method to compute the first correction to Gaussian behavior in a Sonine polynomial expansion quantified by the fourth cumulant a2. Our expressions are compared to previous results and to those obtained through the numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation. It is numerically shown that our method yields very accurate results for small velocities of the rescaled distribution. We finally discuss the ambiguities inherent to a linear approximation method in a2.