Poiseuille flow in a heated granular gas (Q2577184)

The paper is concerned with the problem of the Poiseuille flow of a gas enclosed in a slab and subject to a uniform and longitudinally directed gravitational force. Such a problem has been studied before by several authors with different approaches and some interesting non-Newtonian features were discovered, such as a characteristic bimodal shape of the temperature profile. In spite of its theoretical and academic interest, the problem is of little practical interest for conventional gases under the terrestrial gravity acceleration, since the effect of the field is negligible in such conditions. For this reason the authors rather address the problem of the Poiseuille flow of a granular gas, for which the gravity effects are relevant because of the macroscopic nature of the grains. To this aim, two different approaches are considered: the first one is based on the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations and the second one is based on the granular-gases Boltzmann equation (BE) with a BGK-like collisional term. In both cases the steady state is calculated up to order 2 in a parameter related to the field strength. Among other interesting results, it is showed that the NS-approach is unable to catch the bimodal shape of the temperature profile, while the BE-approach yields it. The discussion of the problem presented in the paper, although performed by means of non-rigorous mathematical methods, is exhaustive and physically well-based.