Generic moment systems and FEM-based numerical solutions for the Boltzmann equation.

Non-equilibrium gas flow problems occur in many real-world applications: vacuum pumps, micro-electro-mechanical devices among others. Modelling non-equilibrium gas flows accurately and solving those models efficiently are of interest to researchers studying rarefied gas dynamics. In kinetic gas theory, moment method is a technique to reduce the complexity of an underlying kinetic equation by suitable approximation and moment models are used to study non-equilibrium gas flows. This article discusses derivation of general moment systems from the Boltzmann equation for mono-atomic gases and presents a generalised numerical framework based on finite-element-method to solve well-defined arbitrary order of moment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]