Ab initio simulation of transport phenomena in rarefied gases

Ab initio potentials are implemented into the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. Such an implementation allows us to model transport phenomena in rarefied gases without any fitting parameter of intermolecular collisions usually extracted from experimental data. Applying the method proposed by Sharipov and Strapasson [Phys. Fluids 24, 011703 (2012)], the use of ab initio potentials in the DSMC requires the same computational efforts as the widely used potentials such as hard spheres, variable hard sphere, variable soft spheres, etc. At the same time, the ab initio potentials provide more reliable results than any other one. As an example, the transport coefficients of a binary mixture He-Ar, viz., viscosity, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusion factor, have been calculated for several values of the mole fraction.