Asymptotic Analysis of Boltzmann Equation in Bounded Domains

Abstract

Consider 3D Boltzmann equation in convex domains with diffusive-reflection boundary condition. We study the hydrodynamic limits as the Knudsen number and Strouhal number $\epsilon \to 0^{+}$. Using the Hilbert expansion, we rigorously justify that the solution of stationary/evolutionary problem converges to that of the steady/unsteady Navier-Stokes-Fourier system. This is the first paper to justify the hydrodynamic limits of nonlinear Boltzmann equations with hard-sphere collision kernel in bounded domain in the $L^{\infty }$ sense. The proof relies on a novel analysis on the boundary layer effect with geometric correction. The difficulty mainly comes from three sources: 3D domain, boundary layer regularity, and time dependence. To fully solve this problem, we introduce several techniques: (1) boundary layer with geometric correction; (2) remainder estimates with $L^2-L^6-L^{\infty }$ framework. Keywords: boundary layer; Milne problem; geometric correction; remainder estimates.

150 pages