Colloquium - Jingwei Hu

Date: November 16, 2018

Time: 3:00PM - 4:00PM

Location: BLOC 117

Speaker: Jingwei Hu, Purdue University

Description: Title: Asymptotic-preserving and positivity-preserving numerical methods for a class of stiff kinetic equations
Abstract: Kinetic equations play an important role in multiscale modeling hierarchy. It serves as a basic building block that connects the microscopic particle models and macroscopic fluid models. Numerically approximating kinetic equations presents several difficulties: 1) high-dimensionality (the equation is in phase space); 2) nonlinearity and stiffness of the collision/interaction terms; 3) positivity of the solution (the unknown is a probability density function); 4) consistency to the limiting fluid models; etc. I will start with a brief overview of the kinetic equations including the Boltzmann equation and the Fokker-Planck equation, and then discuss in particular our recent effort of constructing efficient and robust numerical methods for these equations, overcoming some of the aforementioned difficulties.