Discrete Boltzmann Method with Maxwell-Type Boundary Condition for Slip Flow

The rarefied effect of gas flow in microchannel is significant and cannot be well described by traditional hydrodynamic models. It has been known that discrete Boltzmann model(DBM) has the potential to investigate flows in a relatively wider range of Knudsen number because of its intrinsic kinetic nature inherited from Boltzmann equation.It is crucial to have a proper kinetic boundary condition for DBM to capture the velocity slip and the flow characteristics in the Knudsen layer. In this paper, we present a DBM combined with Maxwell-type boundary condition model for slip flow. The tangential momentum accommodation coefficient is introduced to implement a gas-surface interaction model.Both the velocity slip and the Knudsen layer under various Knudsen numbers and accommodation coefficients can be well described. Two kinds of slip flows, including Couette flow and Poiseuille flow, are simulated to verify the model.To dynamically compare results from different models, the relation between the definition of Knudsen number in hard sphere model and that in BGK model is clarified.     

Numerical study on the gas-kinetic high-order schemes for solving Boltzmann model equation

The high-order compact finite difference technique is introduced to solve the Boltzmann model equation, and the gas-kinetic high-order schemes are developed to simulate the different kinetic model equations such as the BGK model, the Shakhov model and the Ellipsoidal Statistical (ES) model in this paper. The methods are tested for the one-dimensional unsteady shock-tube problems with various Knudsen numbers, the inner flows of normal shock wave for different Mach numbers, and the two-dimensional flows past ...     

Gas Flow in Microchannels – A Lattice Boltzmann Method Approach

Gas flow in microchannels can often encounter tangential slip motion at the solid surface even under creeping flow conditions. To simulate low speed gas flows with Knudsen numbers extending into the transition regime, alternative methods to both the Navier–Stokes and direct simulation Monte Carlo approaches are needed that balance computational efficiency and simulation accuracy. The lattice Boltzmann method offers an approach that is particularly suitable for mesoscopic simulation where details of the molecular motion are not required. In this paper, the lattice Boltzmann method has been applied to gas flows with finite Knudsen number and the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient has been implemented to describe the gas-surface interactions. For fully-developed channel flows, the results of the present method are in excellent agreement with the analytical slip-flow solution of the Navier–Stokes equations, which are valid for Knudsen numbers less than 0.1. The present paper demonstrates that the lattice Boltzmann approach is a promising alternative simulation tool for the design of microfluidic devices.     

Analytic Solution for Diffusional Filtration across Granular Beds in Low Knudsen Number Regime

The collection efficiency of aerosols in the low Knudsen number region was studied using a system of multiple spheres. Kuwabara's free vorticity model was expanded to include the effects of gas slip at the collector surface, with the collection efficiency due to diffusion obtained analytically and compared with existing experimental results. The results showed that the diffusional collection efficiency increases as the Knudsen number increases due to gas slippage at the collector surface. The obtained analytical solution converged to the existing collection efficiency of a solid sphere system with a Knudsen number of zero, and that of a bubble with an infinite Knudsen number. The comparison of the experimental results with analytic solution in this study shows that the trends agree well. Therefore, this study is a subsequent expansion of the collection efficiency in the finite Knudsen number region, and can be used for a broad range of collector sizes, pressures and temperatures.     

Lattice-Boltzmann Simulations of Fluid Flows in MEMS

The lattice Boltzmann model is a simplified kinetic method based on the particle distribution function. We use this method to simulate problems in MEMS, in which the velocity slip near the wall plays an important role. It is demonstrated that the lattice Boltzmann method can capture the fundamental behaviors in micro-channel flow, including velocity slip, nonlinear pressure drop along the channel and mass flow rate variation with Knudsen number. The Knudsen number dependence of the position of the vortex center and the pressure contour in micro-cavity flows is also demonstrated.     

微尺度振荡Couette流的格子Boltzmann模拟

采用有效多松弛时间-格子Boltzmann方法(Effective MRT-LBM)数值模拟了微尺度条件下的振荡Couette和Poiseuille流动. 在微流动LBM中引入Knudsen边界层模型,对松弛时间进行修正. 模拟时平板或外力以正弦周期振动,Couette流中考虑了单平板振动、上下板同相振动这两类情况. 研究结果表明,修正后的MRT-LBM模型能有效用于这类非平衡的微尺度流动模拟;对于Couette流,随着Kn数的增大,壁面滑移效应变得越明显. St越大,板间速度剖面的非线性特性越剧烈;两板同相振荡时,若Kn,St均较小,板间流体受到平板拖动剪切的影响很小,板间速度几乎重叠在一起;在振荡Poiseuille流动中,St数增大到一定值时,相位滞后现象减弱;相对于Kn数,St数对振荡Couette 和Poiseuille流中不同位置处速度相位差的产生有较大影响. 关键词： 格子Boltzmann方法 有效MRT模型 Knudsen层 振荡流     

致密多孔介质中气体渗流的格子Boltzmann模拟

为了能用格子Boltzmann方法来正确地刻画致密多孔介质中微尺度流动问题,对单通道模型进行推广,并将其应用于孔隙群里气体渗流的数值模拟.通过对部分具有代表性的多孔介质中的实际流动问题进行模拟,研究渗透率与平均压力和Knudsen数之间的相互关系.基于理论分析及相关文献中的试验结果,验证模拟结果,为用格子Boltzmann方法深入研究气体渗流问题奠定基础.     

Analytical solution of axi-symmetrical lattice Boltzmann model for cylindrical Couette flows

Analytical solution for the axi-symmetrical lattice Boltzmann model is obtained for the low-Mach number cylindrical Couette flows. In the hydrodynamic limit, the present solution is in excellent agreement with the result of the Navier–Stokes equation. Since the kinetic boundary condition is used, the present analytical solution using nine discrete velocities can describe flows with the Knudsen number up to 0.1. Meanwhile, the comparison with the simulation data obtained by the direct simulation Monte Carlo method shows that higher-order lattice Boltzmann models with more discrete velocities are needed for highly rarefied flows.     

Modelling of condensation at spherical expansion of water vapor into vacuum

The mathematical model of water vapor condensation was developed for the direct simulation Monte Carlo method. This model describes a chain of reactions providing formation and decay of water clusters with consideration of accompanying energy transfer processes. One-dimensional expansion of water vapor into vacuum from an evaporating spherical surface was studied numerically within the range of parameters, corresponding to the flows transitional by the Knudsen number. The influence of condensation on the gas-dynamic pattern of the flow, including the parameters of the Knudsen layer, is discussed. The work was financially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant No. 07-01-00354-a).     

Modified relaxation time Monte Carlo method for continuum-transition gas flows

Gas flows in the continuum-transition regime often occur in micro-electro-mechanical systems. The relaxation time Monte Carlo (RTMC) method was modified by using an ellipsoid statistical model and a multiple translational temperature model in the BGK model equation to simulate continuum-transition gas flows. The modified RTMC method uses a simplified form of the generalized relaxation time, which is related to the macro velocity and the local Knudsen number. The results for Couette flow and Poiseuille flow in microchannels predicted using the modified RTMC and the DSMC are in good agreement with the modified RTMC being much faster than the DSMC for continuum-transition gas flow simulations.     

A Lattice Boltzmann Kinetic Model for Microflow and Heat Transfer

In this paper, we propose a lattice Boltzmann BGK model for simulation of micro flows with heat transfer based on kinetic theory and the thermal lattice Boltzmann method (He et al., J. Comp. Phys. 146:282, 1998). The relaxation times are redefined in terms of the Knudsen number and a diffuse scattering boundary condition (DSBC) is adopted to consider the velocity slip and temperature jump at wall boundaries. To check validity and potential of the present model in modelling the micro flows, two two-dimensional micro flows including thermal Couette flow and thermal developing channel flow are simulated and numerical results obtained compare well with previous studies of the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC), molecular dynamics (MD) approaches and the Maxwell theoretical analysis     

Acoustic properties of rarefied gases inside pores of simple geometries

Analytical solutions describing propagation of monochromatic acoustic waves inside long pores of simple geometries and narrow flat slits are obtained with accounting for gas rarefaction effects. It is assumed that molecular nature of gas is important in Knudsen layers near solid boundaries. Outside the Knudsen layers, the continuum approach is used. This model allows for extension of acoustic analysis to regions of low pressures and microscopic cross-sectional sizes of channels. The problem is solved using linearized Navier-Stokes equations with the boundary conditions that resulted from the first-order approximation with respect to small Knudsen number Kn. For slits and pores of circular and square cross sections, the theoretical dependencies of the dynamic density in the low-frequency range are compared with those that resulted from known experimental data on steady-state flows of rarefied gases in uniform channels. Despite the formal restriction Kn < 1 of asymptotic analysis, the theoretical model agrees well with experiments up to Kn approximately 5. It is shown that the molecular phenomena affect acoustic characteristics of micro-channels and pores starting from relatively small Knudsen numbers Kn > 0.01, especially at low frequencies. The obtained results may be used for analyses of acoustic properties of waveguides, perforated panels, micro-channels and pores in wide range of gas pressures as well as for stationary flows of rarefied gases through long uniform pipes etc.     

Development of a new correlation to calculate permeability for flows with high Knudsen number

Flows with high Knudsen number play a prominent role in many engineering applications. The present study is an effort toward the simulation of flow with high Knudsen number using modified lattice Boltzmann method(LBM) through a porous medium in a channel. The effect of collision between molecules and solid walls, which is required to accurately simulate transition flow regime, is taken into account using a modified relaxation time. Slip velocity on the wall, which is another significant difficulty in simulating transition flow regime, is captured using the slip reflection boundary condition(SRBC). The geometry of porous medium is considered as in-line and staggered. The results are in good agreement with previous works. A new correlation is obtained between permeability, Knudsen number and porosity for flows in transition flow regimes.     

Accuracy analysis of high-order lattice Boltzmann models for rarefied gas flows

In this work, we have theoretically analyzed and numerically evaluated the accuracy of high-order lattice Boltzmann (LB) models for capturing non-equilibrium effects in rarefied gas flows. In the incompressible limit, the LB equation is shown to be able to reduce to the linearized Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook (BGK) equation. Therefore, when the same Gauss–Hermite quadrature is used, LB method closely resembles the discrete velocity method (DVM). In addition, the order of Hermite expansion for the equilibrium distribution function is found not to be directly correlated with the approximation order in terms of the Knudsen number to the BGK equation for incompressible flows. Meanwhile, we have numerically evaluated the LB models for a standing-shear-wave problem, which is designed specifically for assessing model accuracy by excluding the influence of gas molecule/surface interactions at wall boundaries. The numerical simulation results confirm that the high-order terms in the discrete equilibrium distribution function play a negligible role in capturing non-equilibrium effect for low-speed flows. By contrast, appropriate Gauss–Hermite quadrature has the most significant effect on whether LB models can describe the essential flow physics of rarefied gas accurately. Our simulation results, where the effect of wall/gas interactions is excluded, can lead to conclusion on the LB modeling capability that the models with higher-order quadratures provide more accurate results. For the same order Gauss–Hermite quadrature, the exact abscissae will also modestly influence numerical accuracy. Using the same Gauss–Hermite quadrature, the numerical results of both LB and DVM methods are in excellent agreement for flows across a broad range of the Knudsen numbers, which confirms that the LB simulation is similar to the DVM process. Therefore, LB method can offer flexible models suitable for simulating continuum flows at the Navier–Stokes level and rarefied gas flows at the linearized Boltzmann model equation level.     

考虑转动能的一维/二维Boltzmann-Rykov模型方程数值算法

研究考虑转动能的Boltzmann-Rykov模型方程,基于转动自由度对气体分子速度分布函数矩积分,引入约化速度分布函数,应用离散速度坐标法与数值积分技术,将气体运动论模型方程化为在离散速度坐标点处关于三个约化速度分布函数的联立方程组.应用拓展计算流体力学有限差分方法,数值计算考虑转动自由度的双原子气体一维、二维Boltzmann模型方程,得到高、低Knudsen数一维激波管内流动和二维竖直平板绕流问题的流场,分析验证考虑转动能的Boltzmann-Rykov模型方程全流域统一算法求解一维/二维气体流动问题的可靠性.结果表明,气体稀薄程度与分子内自由度对流场具有较大影响,且Knudsen数较高的稀薄气体流动呈现严重的非平衡流动特点.     

Discrete velocity modelling of gaseous mixture flows in MEMS

The need of developing advanced micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) has motivated the study of fluid-thermal flows in devices with micro-scale geometries. In many MEMS applications the Knudsen number varies in the range from 10⁻² to 10². This flow regime can be treated neither as a continuum nor as a free molecular flow. In order to describe these flows it is necessary to implement the Boltzmann equation (BE) or simplified kinetic model equations.The aim of the present work is to propose an efficient methodology for solving internal flows of binary gaseous mixtures in rectangular channels due to small pressure gradients over the whole range of the Knudsen number. The complicated collision integral term of the BE is substituted by the kinetic model proposed by McCormack for gaseous mixtures. The discrete velocity method is implemented to solve in an iterative manner the system of the kinetic equations. Even more the required computational effort is significantly reduced, by accelerating the convergence rate of the iteration scheme. This is achieved by formulating a set of moment equations, which are solved jointly with the transport equations.The velocity profiles and the flow rates of three different binary mixtures (He–Ar, Ne–Ar and He–Xe) in 2D micro-channels of various height to width ratios are calculated. The whole formulation becomes very efficient and can be implemented as an alternative methodology to the classical method of solving the Navier–Stokes equations with slip boundary conditions, which in any case is restricted by the hydrodynamic regime.     

Study on the unified algorithm for three-dimensional complex problems covering various flow regimes using Boltzmann model equation

The Boltzmann simplified velocity distribution function equation describing the gas transfer phenomena from various flow regimes will be explored and solved numerically in this study. The discrete velocity ordinate method of the gas kinetic theory is studied and applied to simulate the complex multi-scale flows. Based on the uncoupling technique on molecular movement and colliding in the DSMC method, the gas-kinetic finite difference scheme is constructed to directly solve the discrete velocity distribution functions by extending and applying the unsteady time-splitting method from computational fluid dynamics. The Gauss-type discrete velocity numerical quadrature technique for different Mach number flows is developed to evaluate the macroscopic flow parameters in the physical space. As a result, the gas-kinetic numerical algorithm is established to study the three-dimensional complex flows from rarefied transition to continuum regimes. The parallel strategy adapted to the gas-kinetic numerical algorithm is investigated by analyzing the inner parallel degree of the algorithm, and then the HPF parallel processing program is developed. To test the reliability of the present gas-kinetic numerical method, the three-dimensional complex flows around sphere and spacecraft shape with various Knudsen numbers are simulated by HPF parallel computing. The computational results are found in high resolution of the flow fields and good agreement with the theoretical and experimental data. The computing practice has confirmed that the present gas-kinetic algorithm probably provides a promising approach to resolve the hypersonic aerothermodynamic problems with the complete spectrum of flow regimes from the gas-kinetic point of view of solving the Boltzmann model equation. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 90205009 and 10321002) and the National Parallel Computing Center     

Simulation of micro- and nano-scale flows via the lattice Boltzmann method

We use the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) for analysis of high and moderate Knudsen number phenomena. Simulation results are presented for microscale Couette and Poiseuille flows. The slip velocity, nonlinear pressure drop, and mass flow rate are compared with previous numerical results and/or experimental data. The Knudsen minimum is successfully predicted for the first time within the LBM framework. These results validate the usage of the LBM based commercial, arbitrary geometry code PowerFLOW for simulating nanoscale problems.     

Higher-order quadrature-based moment methods for kinetic equations

Kinetic equations containing terms for spatial transport, body forces, and particle–particle collisions occur in many applications (e.g., rarefied gases, dilute granular gases, fluid-particle flows). The direct numerical solution of the kinetic equation is usually intractable due to the large number of independent variables. A useful alternative is to reformulate the problem in terms of the moments of the velocity distribution function. Closure of the moment equations is challenging for flows sufficiently far away from the Maxwellian limit. In previous work, a quadrature-based third-order moment closure was derived for approximating solutions to the kinetic equation for arbitrary Knudsen number. A key component of quadrature-based closures is the moment-inversion algorithm used to find the non-negative weights and velocity abscissas. Here, a robust inversion procedure is proposed for three-component velocity moments up to ninth order. By reconstructing the velocity distribution function, the spatial fluxes in the moment equations are treated using a kinetic-based finite-volume solver. Because the quadrature-based moment method employs the moment transport equations directly instead of a discretized form of the kinetic equation, the mass, momentum and energy are conserved for arbitrary Knudsen and Mach numbers. The computational algorithm is tested for the Riemann shock problem and, for increasing Knudsen numbers (i.e. larger deviations from the Maxwellian limit), the accuracy of the moment closure is shown to be determined by the discrete representation of the spatial fluxes.