The Liouville equation is of fundamental importance in the derivation of continuum models for physical systems which are approximated by interacting particles. However, when particles undergo instantaneous interactions such as collisions, the derivation of the Liouville equation must be adapted to exclude non-physical particle positions, and include the effect of instantaneous interactions. We present the weak formulation of the Liouville equation for interacting particles with general particle dynamics and interactions, and discuss the results using two examples.

A moment method with closures based on Gaussian quadrature formulas is proposed to solve the Boltzmann kinetic equation with a hard-sphere collision kernel for mono-dispersed particles. Different orders of accuracy in terms of the moments of the velocity distribution function are considered, accounting for moments up to seventh order. Quadrature-based closures for four different models for inelastic collision-the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook, ES-BGK, the Maxwell model for hard-sphere collisions, and the full Boltzmann hard-sphere collision integral-are derived and compared. The approach is validated studying a dilute non-isothermal granular flow of inelastic particles between two stationary Maxwellian walls. Results obtained from the kinetic models are compared with the predictions of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of a nearly equivalent system with finite-size particles. The influence of the number of quadrature nodes used to approximate the velocity distribution function on the accuracy of the predictions is assessed. Results for constitutive quantities such as the stress tensor and the heat flux are provided, and show the capability of the quadrature-based approach to predict them in agreement with the MD simulations under dilute conditions.