Relaxation of internal temperature and volume viscosity

We investigate the relaxation of internal temperature and the concept of volume viscosity in nonequilibrium gas models derived from the kinetic theory. We first investigate a nonequilibrium gas model with two temperatures-translational and internal-where the volume viscosity is absent. We establish that in a relaxation regime, the temperature difference becomes proportional to the divergence of the velocity fields and define a nonequilibrium, multitemperature, volume viscosity coefficient. We next analyze the convergence of the two temperature model towards the one temperature model when the relaxation is fast. We then investigate a nonequilibrium two temperature gas model with a fast and a slow internal energy mode. We establish that in a relaxation regime, there are four contributions to the volume viscosity, namely, the fast internal mode volume viscosity, the slow internal mode volume viscosity, the relaxation pressure, and the perturbed source term. In the thermodynamic equilibrium limit, the sum of these four terms converges toward the one-temperature two-mode volume viscosity. We finally perform Monte Carlo simulations of spontaneous fluctuations near thermodynamic equilibrium. The numerical results obtained from the Boltzmann equation are compared to the predictions of the one and two temperature fluid models, and the agreement between theory and calculations is complete. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3640083]