Anisotropic Relaxation in Binary Mixture of Maxwell Molecules

Abstract

The relaxation of initial temperature difference, stresses and heat fluxes in a binary mixture of Maxwell molecules is studied by solving the two-temperature 13-moment equations for the mixture under the assumption of spatial homogeneity. For simplicity, the flow velocities for each gas are assumed to be the same, and the rates at which the stresses and heat fluxes relax are compared with the rate of relaxation of the temperature difference. It is found that, for equal densities and disparate masses, Grad's conjecture on relaxation in “epochs,” or stages, is borne out. For unequal densities, however, it is found that under certain conditions, the heat flux for the gas of larger density relaxes slower than the temperature difference.