Comparison of maximum entropy and quadrature-based moment closures for shock transitions prediction in one-dimensional gaskinetic theory

The Navier-Stokes-Fourier (NSF) equations are conventionally used to model continuum flow near local thermodynamic equilibrium. In the presence of more rarefied flows, there exists a transitional regime in which the NSF equations no longer hold, and where particle-based methods become too expensive for practical problems. To close this gap, moment closure techniques having the potential of being both valid and computationally tractable for these applications are sought. In this study, a number of five-moment closures for a model one-dimensional kinetic equation are assessed and compared. In particular, four different moment closures are applied to the solution of stationary shocks. The first of these is a Grad-type moment closure, which is known to fail for moderate departures from equilibrium. The second is an interpolative closure based on maximization of thermodynamic entropy which has previously been shown to provide excellent results for 1D gaskinetic theory. Additionally, two quadrature methods of moments (QMOM) are considered. One method is based on the representation of the distribution function in terms of a combination of three Dirac delta functions. The second method, an extended QMOM (EQMOM), extends the quadrature-based approach by assuming a bi-Maxwellian representation of the distribution function. The closing fluxes are analyzed in each case and the region of physical realizability is examined for the closures. Numerical simulations of stationary shock structures as predicted by each moment closure are compared to reference kinetic and the corresponding NSF-like equation solutions. It is shown that the bi-Maxwellian and interpolative maximum-entropy-based moment closures are able to closely reproduce the results of the true maximum-entropy distribution closure for this case very well, whereas the other methods do not. For moderate departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium, the Grad-type and QMOM closures produced unphysical subshocks and were unable to provide converged solutions at high Mach number shocks. Conversely, the bi-Maxwellian and interpolative maximum-entropy-based closures are able to provide smooth solutions with no subshocks that agree extremely well with the kinetic solutions. Moreover, the EQMOM bi-Maxwellian closure would seem to readily allow the extension to fully three-dimensional kinetic descriptions, with the advantage of possessing a closed-form expression for the distribution function, unlike its interpolative counterpart.