Kinetic and Fluid Simulations of Collisional Plasma Shock

Thermophysics Universal Research Framework (TURF) is an in-house framework developed at the In-Space Propulsion Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/RQRS). Cross verification between PIC, Vlasov, and fluid plasma models within the framework was conducted on the 1D electrostatic collisionless shock, and it was confirmed that the PIC and Vlasov models produced the same result while the fluid model did not capture the important kinetic features. This work will extend the previous work by including a collisional effect between charged species using Nanbu's method for the PIC model and solving the Fokker-Planck equation. The three models (PIC with Coulomb collision, Vlasov-Fokker-Planck, and fluid models) will be used to simulate a 1D collisional plasma shock within the same framework.