MODELING SHOCK-WAVES IN AN IDEAL-GAS - GOING BEYOND THE NAVIER-STOKESLEVEL

We model a shock wave in an ideal gas by solving a modified version of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations of hydrodynamics, where, fol lowing an earlier conjecture by Holian [Phys. Rev. A 37, 2562 (1988)), we use the temperature in the direction of shock propagation T(xx), r ather than the average temperature T-(T(xx)+T(yy)+T(zz))/3, in the eva luation of the linear transport coefficients. The results are found to agree much better with the molecular-dynamics simulations of Salomons and Mareschal [Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 269 (1992)] than standard Navier- Stokes theory.