Molecular dynamics study of flow of Ar-Kr mixture across a smooth walled nano channel with and without obstacles

Abstract

Nanofluidics has emerged as an interesting field involving science and engineering, in which a fluid is made to flow across the structures having diameter in the nanometers range such as nanochannels. Nanochannels are channels having any one or all dimensions in the range of nanometers. As a flow in the reduced-size dimensional system, the nanochannel flow manifests a series of special properties and has gained a large attention. The understanding of different properties and dynamic behavior of fluid flows across a nanochannel has great impact on the study of fluid dynamics and various applications in the field of physics, chemistry, medicine and electronics. In the current study, we have studied fluid flow in smooth walled nanochannel, with and without obstacles introduced in the path of fluid flow. For both the cases we studied the velocity profiles of the system and analyzed the effect of varying channel width, varying force field, and varying densities on the velocity profile of the system. It is inferred that there is variation in the mean velocity of system in all cases. The mean velocity of the system increases with increase in the channel width, and applied force and decrease in density of mixture. We have taken pure Ar, pure Kr and Ar-Kr binary mixture as a fluid for the study. The velocity profile of the Ar-Kr mixture lies between that of pure Ar and pure Kr. For Ar system, the value of mean velocity is highest and for Kr system the value is lowest. There is a decrease in the mean velocity of the system with introduction of obstacles in the path of flow of the nanochannel. The value of viscosity of the system remains constant even with the introduction of obstacles in the path of the flow of system.[Copyright information to be updated in production process]