The kinetic theory of partially ionized reactive gas mixtures II

We investigate the kinetic theory of partially ionized reactive gas mixtures in strong magnetic fields following Giovangigli et al (2003 Physica A 327 313-48). A new tensor basis is introduced for expanding the perturbed distribution functions associated with the viscous tensor. New symmetry properties of transport coefficients are established as well as simplified bracket expressions. A variational framework is introduced for a direct evaluation of the thermal conductivity and the thermal diffusion ratios. The transport linear systems corresponding to the usual Sonine/Wang-Chang Uhlenbeck polynomial expansions are evaluated. The behavior of transport coefficients and transport fluxes for vanishing magnetic fields is investigated using series expansions. Practical implementation of iterative algorithms for solving the resulting complex symmetric constrained singular linear systems is discussed as well as various approximations of the transport coefficients.