Article,
Attempted density blowup in a freely cooling dilute granular gas: hydrodynamics versus molecular dynamics
(2008)
Abstract
It has been recently shown (Fouxon et al., 2007) that, in the framework of ideal granular hydrodynamics, an initially smooth hydrodynamic flow of a granular gas can produce an infinite gas density in a finite time. Exact solutions that exhibit this property have been derived. Here we perform molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of a freely cooling gas of nearly elastically colliding hard disks, aimed at identifying the ättempted" density blowup regime. The initial conditions of the simulated flow mimic those of one particular solution of the ideal equations that exhibits the density blowup. We measure hydrodynamic fields in the MD simulations and compare them with predictions from the ideal theory. We find a remarkable quantitative agreement between the two over an extended time interval, proving the existence of the attempted blowup regime. As the attempted singularity is approached, the hydrodynamic fields, as observed in the MD simulations, deviate from the predictions of the ideal solution. To investigate the mechanism of breakdown of the ideal theory near the singularity, we extend the hydrodynamic theory by accounting separately for the gradient-dependent transport and for finite density corrections.
