Gas Flow in Thermal Nonequilibrium and Hyperbolic Systems with Relaxation

Dr. Yanni Zeng

Department of Mathematics
University of Alabama at Birmingham

September 24, 1999

Abstract

A model of gas flow in vibrational nonequilibrium will be discussed. Behavior of nonequilibrium flow will be compared with that of equilibrium flow. Especially, dissipation induced by relaxation terms in the PDEs will be shown to be important in global existence and large time behavior. The result can be extended to other hyperbolic systems with relaxation arising from continuum mechanics, such as Broadwell model for the nonlinear Boltzmann equations and viscoelasticity.