An Interlaced System For Rigid Rotors

The previously developed interlaced system [1] which can be used for problems where the cell Knudsen number may vary as 0 < Kn(c) < infinity has been extended to include a further set of energy levels related to the internal energy of a rigid rotor. The evolution of a distribution function f (r, c, e(i), t) is described by kinetic equations which are modified in such a way that molecular encounters with translational-rotational energy transfer are described using a transition probability P-ij(kl) (g), with g as translational speed, and a molecular diameter sigma (g). The number of dimensions is reduced by replacing in the rhs-gain term of the kinetic equations the translational parts of the distribution functions by their Maxwellians. Some preliminary numerical experiments were performed for the homogeneous case.