The aim of this paper is to show that procedure of maximum entropy principle for closure of moments equations for rarefied monatomic gases can be extended also to polyatomic gases. The main difference with respect to the usual procedure is existence of two hierarchies of macroscopic equations for moments of suitable distribution function, in which the internal energy of a molecule is taken into account. The field equations for 14 moments of distribution function, which include dynamic pressure, are derived. The entropy and the entropy flux are shown to be a generalization of the ones for classical Grad's distribution. The results are in perfect agreement with the recent macroscopic approach of extended thermodynamics for real gases.

International audienceIn this work, we investigate the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions to the non-reactive fully elastic Boltzmann equations for mixtures in the diffusive scaling. We deal with cross sections such as hard spheres or cut-off power law potentials. We use Hilbert expansions near the common thermodynamic equilibrium granted by the H-theorem. The lower-order non trivial equality obtained from the Boltzmann equations leads to a linear functional equation in the velocity variable which is solved thanks to the Fredholm alternative. Since we consider multicomponent mixtures, the classical techniques introduced by Grad cannot be applied, and we propose a new method to treat the terms involving particles with different masses. The next-order equality in the Hilbert expansion then allows to write the macroscopic continuity equations for each component of the mixture