Nonlinear Transport of Tracer Particles Immersed in a Strongly Sheared Dilute Gas with Inelastic Collisions

Nonlinear transport of tracer particles immersed in a sheared dilute gas with inelastic collisions is analyzed within the framework of the Boltzmann kinetic equation. Two different yet complementary approaches are employed to obtain exact results. First, we maintain the structure of the inelastic Boltzmann collision operator but consider inelastic Maxwell models (IMMs) instead of the realistic model of inelastic hard spheres (IHS). Using IMMs enables us to compute the collisional moments of the inelastic Boltzmann operator for mixtures without explicitly knowing the velocity distribution functions of the mixture. Second, we consider a kinetic model of the Boltzmann equation for IHS. This kinetic model is based on the equivalence between a gas of elastic hard spheres subjected to a drag force proportional to the particle velocity and a gas of IHS. We solve the Boltzmann–Lorentz kinetic equation for tracer particles using a generalized Chapman–Enskog-like expansion around the shear flow distribution. This reference distribution retains all hydrodynamic orders in the shear rate. The mass flux is obtained to first order in the deviations of the concentration, pressure, and temperature from their values in the reference state. Due to the anisotropy induced in the velocity space by shear flow, the mass flux is expressed in terms of tensorial quantities rather than conventional scalar diffusion coefficients. Unlike the previous results obtained for IHS using different approximations, the results derived in this paper are exact. Generally, the comparison between the IHS results and those found here shows reasonable quantitative agreement, especially for IMM results. This good agreement shows again evidence of the reliability of IMMs for studying rapid granular flows. Finally, we analyze segregation by thermal diffusion as an application of the theory. Phase diagrams illustrating segregation are presented and compared with previous IHS results, demonstrating qualitative agreement.