A hybrid method for hydrodynamic-kinetic flow – Part II – Coupling of hydrodynamic and kinetic models

In this work we present a non stationary domain decomposition algorithm for multiscale hydrodynamic-kinetic problems, in which the Knudsen number may span from equilibrium to highly rarefied regimes. Our approach is characterized by using the full Boltzmann equation for the kinetic regime, the Compressible Euler equations for equilibrium, with a buffer zone in which the BGK-ES equation is used to represent the transition between fully kinetic to equilibrium flows. In this fashion, the Boltzmann solver is used only when the collision integral is non-stiff, and the mean free path is of the same order as the mesh size needed to capture variations in macroscopic quantities. Thus, in principle, the same mesh size and time steps can be used in the whole computation. Moreover, the time step is limited only by convective terms. Since the Boltzmann solver is applied only in wholly kinetic regimes, we use the reduced noise DSMC scheme we have proposed in Part I of the present work. This ensures a smooth exchange of information across the different domains, with a natural way to construct interface numerical fluxes. Several tests comparing our hybrid scheme with full Boltzmann DSMC computations show the good agreement between the two solutions, on a wide range of Knudsen numbers.