Regularized extended-hydrodynamic equations for a rarefied granular gas and the plane shock waves

Abstract

Motions of grains such as in dust storms, sand dunes, snow avalanches, Saturn's rings, and others are categorized as ``granular'' flows. We have used the Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic theory to analyze rapid granular flows with an analogy between the motion of macroscopic grains and the random motion of atoms in molecular gases, with a crucial difference that the grains collide inelastically. The inelasticity is responsible for many peculiar behaviors of granular gases as we demonstrate by considering shock-wave propagation in granular gases with higher-order hydrodynamic equations.