Capturing the influence of intermolecular potential in rarefied gas flows by a kinetic model with velocity-dependent collision frequency

A kinetic model called the v-model is proposed to replace the complicated Boltzmann collision operator in the simulation of rarefied flows of monatomic gas. The model follows the relaxation-time approximation, but the collision frequency (i.e. inverse relaxation time) is a function of the molecular velocity to reflect part of the collision details of the Boltzmann equation, and the target velocity distribution function (VDF) to which the VDF relaxes is close to that used in the Shakhov model. Based on the numerical simulation of strong non-equilibrium shock waves, a half-theoretical and half-empirical collision frequency is designed for different intermolecular potentials: the nu-model shows significantly improved accuracy, and the underlying mechanism is analysed. The nu-model also performs well in canonical rarefied microflows, especially in thermal transpiration, where kinetic models with velocity-independent collision frequency lack the capability to distinguish the influence of intermolecular potentials.