Ab initio simulation of heat transfer through a mixture of rarefied gases

Abstract

The heat flux problem for a binary gaseous mixture confined between two parallel plates with different temperatures is studied on the basis of the direct simulation Monte Carlo method with an implementation of ab initio potential. The calculations were carried for a wide range of the gas rarefaction, for several values of the mole fraction and for two values of the temperature difference. The smaller value of the difference corresponds to the limit when the nonlinear terms are negligible, while the larger value describes a nonlinear heat transfer. The heat flux, temperature, and mole fraction distributions are presented. To study the influence of the intermolecular potential, the same simulations are carried out for the hard sphere molecular model. A relative deviation of the results based on this model from those based on the ab initio potential is analyzed. It is pointed out that the difference between the heat flux of the two potentials is about 8% and 5% for the small and large temperature differences, respectively. The temperature distribution between plates is weakly affected by the molecular potential, while the chemical composition variation is the most sensitive quantity for the considered problem. The reported results can be used as benchmark data to test model kinetic equations for gaseous mixtures.