Microscopic derivation of discrete hydrodynamics

Abstract

By using the standard theory of coarse graining based on Zwanzig's projection operator, we derive the dynamic equations for discrete hydrodynamic variables. These hydrodynamic variables are defined in terms of the Delaunay triangulation. The resulting microscopically derived equations can be understood, a posteriori, as a discretization on an arbitrary irregular grid of the Navier-Stokes equations. The microscopic derivation provides a set of discrete equations that exactly conserves mass, momentum, and energy and the dissipative part of the dynamics produces strict entropy increase. In addition, the microscopic derivation provides a practical implementation of thermal fluctuations in a way that the fluctuation-dissipation theorem is satisfied exactly. This paper points toward a close connection between coarse-graining procedures from microscopic dynamics and discretization schemes for partial differential equations.