AE 747A: MOLECUALR GAS DYNAMICS

TERM PAPER ON

FLOW BEHAVIOUR IN MICRO/NANO CAVITY USING DSMC, R13 AND NSF

EQUATIONS

Submitted by
Umang Shukla (11775)
Akshay Ranjan (12074)

FLOW BEHAVIOUR IN MICRO/NANO CAVITY USING DSMC, R13 AND NSF

EQUATIONS
Introduction
Fluid flows at micro and nanoscale had become very important in the recent years due to the advent
of miniaturization and advances in fabrication technology, so the basic understanding of the flow in
these devices is essential for an efficient design.
The Navier Stokes Fourier (NSF) equations can be used to describe the flow at the low Knudsen
number (Kn), however for the micro flows where the degree of rarefaction is large and hence
Knudsen number is large, NSF equations cannot be used. Flow at all Knudsen number can be
described by Boltzmann equation, however there are many mathematical difficulties associated in
solving Boltzmann equation due to its integro differential nature. The numerical solution of
Boltzmann equation is also rather involved and is computationally expensive. So a trade off is often
made between accuracy and efficiency of the method to solve Boltzmann equation numerically.
In this term paper, I would list few methods presented in [1] and [2] such as DSMC, method of
moment and compare them with NSF.
DSMC Simulation Method
DSMC is a particle method based on the kinetic theory for the simulation of dilute gases. The
detailed explanation of the steps is found in [3]. The evolution of particle is determined by tracking
their velocities and positions. The flow develops in a realistic behaviour starting from the initial
conditions by first moving the molecules through distances appropriate to their velocity components
and then taking appropriate action such as evaluating the collisions between the particles. In DSMC,
the collision and particle movements are decoupled.
The advantage of DSMC is that there is no issue of numerical instability and convergence as there is
no such equation is solved. It includes simple and effective boundary conditions. However as given
in [1], for micro-flows where Mach number is small, DSMC method imply stochastic noise and its
elimination makes the method costly.
R13 equations
The regularized 13 moment equations as given in [1] are:
The first five are for the conservation of mass, momentum and energy.

Here u is the internal energy, p and ij are pressure and stress tensor.

For = Rij = mijk = 0 the above equation reduce to the 13 moment equations of Grad.
Boundary Conditions
As given in [1] boundary conditions are listed below:

All quantities appearing in the boundary conditions must be evaluated at the wall.
Model Problem: Lid Driven Cavity
The lid driven cavity is a benchmark problem and in spite of simple geometry it includes the most of
the features of the complicated process described by the kinetic equation. The length of the cavity
considered is L and it enclosed he rarefied monoatomic gas. The boundaries at x=0, x=L and y=0 are
stationary while y=L is moving with the horizontal velocity Vlid. All the walls are considered
isothermal and T0=273K.

The problem is solved by using Finite Difference approximation and the entire algorithm is given in
[1].

Results and Discussion

Velocity Profile
From Fig 2 as given in [1] we observe that for small Kn number that is near continuum regime all
methods NSF and R13 exhibit a good agreement with DSMC , however for large Kn number NSF
equation with first and second order boundary conditions fail to validate the result whereas R13
shows a good accuracy.

Fig 2: Velocity Profile Vy/Vlid (left)on the horizontal plane crossing the main vortex and VX/Vlid (right)
on vertical plane crossing centre of cavity for different Kn and Vlid =50m/s.
Shear Stress Contour
Fig 3 as given in [4] and Fig 4 as given in [1] shows the behaviour of shear stress at different Kn. From
the two figures we can conclude that the DSMC and R13 shows similar behaviour which differ from
the NSF contour. DSMC and R13 shows more uniform stress field at the upper and lower walls,
whereas the NSF show more variation along these walls.

Fig 3: Shear Stress Contour for Kn=0.1 and Mach number=0.1

Fig 4: Streamlines superimposed on shear stress contours with Kn=0.08 and vlid = 50m/s

Temperature Contour and Heat Flow Lines

The most notable difference between NSF (Fig 5(c ,d)) and DSMC (Fig 5 (a)) is the reverse direction of
heat flux which can also be seen in Fig 6 given in [2]. In the NSF, heat flux direction is from hot region
to cold region while in DSMC and R13 heat flux direction is from cold to warm.
In Fig 7 given in [2] which is at Kn=0.02 the direction of heat flux from DSMC and NFS is same.
The reason being that Kn=0.02 is near the continuum regime where expansion cooling phenomena
does not occur as T>TW for almost entire region near the left wall and only viscous dissipation
dictates the heat transfer direction while at Kn=0.05 and 0.08, the expansion cooling phenomena
becomes significant which is not observed from the NSF data. This indicates that non equilibrium
flow conditions exist in slip regime which is not captured by NSF method.

Fig 5: Heat Flux superimposed on temperature contours with Kn=0.08 and vlid = 50m/s

Fig 6: Comparison of heat flux superimposed on temperature contour by (a) NSF and (b) DSMC at
Kn=0.05 and Vlid =50m/s

Fig 7: Comparison of heat flux superimposed on temperature contour by (a) NSF and (b) DSMC at
Kn=0.02 and Vlid =50m/s
Conclusion:
The R13 moment method is compared with other methods such as DSMC and NSF through a specific
example of lid driven cavity and through a detailed demonstration we can considered R13 method as
an alternative mathematical method for solving Boltzmann equation with less computational cost
and for small Mach number with moderate Knudsen number. Here, it is also shown that if the
boundary conditions for the NSF equations are modified to account for the velocity slip and
temperature then also they cannot capture the thermal flow features correctly. So, wherever Kn
number is moderate or large the use of NSF is discouraged and we have to look for other methods as
R13 or DSMC depending on the requirement of efficiency and accuracy.

References
1. Rana, Anirudh, Manuel Torrilhon, and Henning Struchtrup. "A robust numerical method for
the R13 equations of rarefied gas dynamics: Application to lid driven cavity." Journal of
Computational Physics 236 (2013): 169-186.

2. John, Benzi, Xiao-Jun Gu, and David R. Emerson. "Investigation of heat and mass transfer in
a lid-driven cavity under nonequilibrium flow conditions."Numerical Heat Transfer, Part B:
Fundamentals 58.5 (2010): 287-303.

3. G.Bird, Molecular Gas Dynamics and the Direct Simulation of Gas Flows, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, UK, 1994.
4. Coarse Graining in Kinetic Gas Theory: Non equilibrium Fluid Flow Model by Manuel
Torrilhon, Centre of Computational Engineering Science, RWTH Aachen University