Existence, Uniqueness and Positivity of solutions for BGK models for mixtures

Abstract

We consider kinetic models for a multi component gas mixture without chemical reactions. In the literature, one can find two types of BGK models in order to describe gas mixtures. One type has a sum of BGK type interaction terms in the relaxation operator, for example the model described by Klingenberg, Pirner and Puppo, 2017 which contains well-known models of physicists and engineers for example Hamel, 1965, and Gross and Krook, 1956, as special cases. The other type contains only one collision term on the right-hand side, for example the well-known model of Andries, Aoki and Perthame, 2002. For each of these two models we prove existence, uniqueness and positivity of solutions in the first part of the paper. In the second part, we use the first model in order to determine an unknown function in the energy exchange of the macroscopic equations for gas mixtures described by Dellacherie.