Statistical Simulation of Micro-Cavity Flows

Abstract

Two particle approaches, namely the information preservation (IP) method and the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, are used to simulate micro‐cavity gas flows at low Mach numbers. In the continuum regime, the velocity profiles given by the IP and DSMC methods agree well with the Navier‐Stokes solution of Ghia and the BGK solution of Su et al. The IP and DSMC results are in a satisfactory agreement at the Knudsen number (Kn) of 0.1, and agree on the whole with each other but slightly differ from each other in certain details at Kn of 1.0. This small difference results from the strong singularity at the angle points that affects a larger and larger region as Kn increases. At very small Mach number the statistical scatter inherent in the DSMC method becomes serious, whereas the IP method still works well to obtain the flow fields and surface pressure distributions at a normal sample size.