A Parallel DSMC Investigation of Monatomic/Diatomic Gas Flows in a Micro/Nano Cavity

Abstract

In the current study, we performed a DSMC investigation to study the nonequilibrium effects on monatomic and diatomic rarefied flows in micro/nano lid-driven cavity. Our DSMC solver is parallel and benefits from a variable time step algorithm. The results of our simulation showed that growing rarefaction effects increase the maximum temperature of the cavity flow. As the inter-molecular rate of collision diminishes in the nonequilibrium regime, molecules manage to conserve their obtained energy from diffused surfaces; consequently, the flow temperature increases. We also investigate the nonequilibrium effects on the shear stress profile in the micro/nano cavity. Although increasing the Knudsen number decreases flow shear stress, the nondimensional shear stress, which shows the molecular potential for performing collision in the rarefied flow, increases.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Faculty of Engineering under grant no. 16237/1. The authors would like to thank Prof. Stefan Stefanov from the Institute of Mechanics, Bulgarian Academy of Science, for useful discussions on the results reported in this work.