Stokes' paradox in rarefied gases: A perspective through the method of fundamental solutions

Abstract

In the realm of fluid dynamics, a curious and counterintuitive phenomenon is Stokes' paradox. While Stokes equations -- used for modeling slow and steady flows -- lead to a meaningful solution to the problem of slow and steady flow past a sphere, they fail to yield a non-trivial solution to the problem of slow and steady flow past an infinitely long cylinder (a two-dimensional problem essentially); this is referred to as Stokes' paradox. We revisit this paradox in the context of rarefied gas flows by means of the method of fundamental solutions (MFS). To this end, we adopt an extended hydrodynamic model, referred to as the CCR model, consisting of the balance equations for the mass, momentum and energy and closed with the coupled constitutive relations. We determine an analytic solution of the CCR model for the problem and compare it with the MFS-based numerical solution. Apart from addressing flow past a circular cylinder, we aim to showcase the capability of the MFS to predict the flow past other objects in two dimensions for which the analytic solutions do not exist. For that, we investigate the problem of rarefied gas flow past an infinitely long semicircular cylinder.