DSMC Simulation of Heat Transfer in Subsonic Rarefied Gas Flows through Micro/Nanochannels Imposing a Constant Inflow/Wall Temperature Difference

Abstract

We use the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method and investigate the subsonic rarefied gas flow through micro/nanochannels, imposing a constant pressure ratio and a constant temperature difference between the inflow and wall temperature. We further study the heat transfer characteristics of subsonic nitrogen gas flow under this imposed temperature difference. We show that, specifying a higher temperature magnitude would lead to more rarefactions even imposing a fixed temperature difference. This consequently results in a higher wall heat flux rate for a fixed inflow-wall temperature difference. Our investigating shows that the number of simulated particles need to increase suitably if one wishes to avoid statistical fluctuations on the wall heat flux values.