Thermal Conductivity and Shear Viscosity of Liquid and Fluid Argon. An Extended Comparison between Experimental and Molecular Dynamics Data

Abstract

Abstract We compare the thermal conductivity, λ, and the shear viscosity, ηs, of liquid and dense fluid argon obtained by experiment and computed by molecular dynamics (MD) using the Lennard-Jones pair potential. A wide region of states of reduced densities between 0.65 and 0.85 and temperatures of 0.7–3.5 is systematically investigated. For liquid states and dense fluid states up to reduced temperatures of about 2.5, agreement between experiment and theory is excellent. For states of higher temperatures and pressures, significant discrepancies appear for λ. However, for the latter states there exist no direct measurements of λ, and we are left with the fit equation given by Younglove and Hanley, which cannot reliably be used for pressures larger than 200 MPa, as these authors stated.