Hydrodynamic limits with shock waves of the Boltzmann equation

We show that piecewise smooth solutions with shocks of the Euler equations in gas dynamics can be obtained as the zero Knudsen number limit of solutions of the Boltzmann equation for the hard-sphere collision model. The construction of the Boltzmann solutions is done in two steps. First, we introduce a generalized Hilbert expansion with shock layer correction to construct approximations to the solutions of the Boltzmann equations with small Knudsen numbers. We then apply the recently developed macro-micro decomposition and energy method for Boltzmann shock layers to construct the exact Boltzmann solutions through the stability analysis. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals. Inc.