A numerical solution of the kinetic collection equation using high spectral grid resolution: A proposed reference (Q1282432)

The multi-moments method is applied to the original kinetic collection equation (KCE) in order to obtain a set of equations with respect to the moments in spectral bins. For solving this set of equations an accurate and efficient method is proposed. The method conserves the total mass independently of the number of bins, time step, initial conditions, or kernel of interaction. In the present paper the number of bins is varied from 36, 72, 108 and 144 in order to study the behavior of solutions. Different kernels and initial conditions are tested. In all cases the results show that when the number of bins increases from 36 to 144 the numerical solution of the KCE gradually converges. Increasing the number of bins from 108 to 144 produces only a small difference in the numerical solution, indicating that the solution obtained for 144 bins approaches the ``real'' solution of the KCE. The use of this solution for evaluating the accuracy of other numerical methods that solve the KCE is suggested.