Gas kinetic algorithm for flows in Poiseuille-like microchannels using Boltzmann model equation

Abstract

The gas-kinetic unified algorithm using Boltzmann model equation have been extended and developed to solve the micro-scale gas flows in Poiseuille-like micro-channels from Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The numerical modeling of the gas kinetic boundary conditions suitable for micro-scale gas flows is presented. To test the present method, the classical Couette flows with various Knudsen numbers, the gas flows from short microchannels like plane Poiseuille and the pressure-driven gas flows in two-dimensional short microchannels have been simulated and compared with the approximate solutions of the Boltzmann equation, the related DSMC results, the modified N-S solutions with slip-flow boundary theory, the gas-kinetic BGK-Burnett solutions and the experimental data. The comparisons show that the present gas-kinetic numerical algorithm using the mesoscopic Boltzmann simplified velocity distribution function equation can effectively simulate and reveal the gas flows in microchannels. The numerical experience indicates that this method may be a powerful tool in the numerical simulation of micro-scale gas flows from MEMS.