Structure of planar shock waves in gaseous mixtures based on ab initio direct simulation

The structure of planar shock wave propagating through a helium-argon mixture is modeledby the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method based on ab initio potentials for a wide range of the Mach number and for various molar fractions. The use of ab initio potentials allows us to carry out the simulation without any adjustable parameter usually extracted from experimental data. As a result, the density, temperature, molar fraction, diffusion velocity, pressure tensor and heat flow profiles inside of the shock wave are calculated. The temperature overshoot phenomenon is discussed in details. The slopes of density are calculated with the numerical error less than 0.5 %. It is pointed out that the slopes for mixture are always smaller than those for a single gas.