Development of Ab Initio Collision Models for Direct Simulation Monte Carlo Simulations of Hypersonic Flows

Abstract

Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) is a widely used numerical technique for simulating rarefied gas flows encountered in aerospace and micro-scale engineering applications, such as atmospheric re-entry, hypersonic flight, vacuum systems, and microchannel flows. The method provides a probabilistic solution to the Boltzmann equation by tracking the motion and collisions of representative particles. It has become one of the most reliable approaches for studying non-equilibrium gas dynamics. The accuracy of DSMC simulations, however, strongly depends on the collision models employed to represent intermolecular interactions and transport processes.