Kinetic Theory of a Dilute Gas System under Steady Heat Conduction

The velocity distribution function of the steady-state Boltzmann equation for hard-core molecules in the presence of a temperature gradient has been obtained explicitly to second order in density and the temperature gradient. Some thermodynamical quantities are calculated from the velocity distribution function for hard-core molecules and compared with those for Maxwell molecules and the steady-state Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) equation. We have found qualitative differences between hard-core molecules and Maxwell molecules in the thermodynamical quantities, and also confirmed that the steady-state BGK equation belongs to the same universality class as Maxwell molecules.