Velocity slip coefficients based on the hard-sphere Boltzmann equation

Abstract

We present a kinetic theory derivation of higher-order slip boundary conditions. The situation studied is that of a pressure driven isothermal gas flowing through a plane microchannel. The distribution function is expanded in terms of half-range Hermite polynomials and the system of moment equations in the expansion coefficients is analytically solved. The velocity slip coefficients, as well as their Knudsen-layer corrections, are obtained by evaluating the solution in the near continuum limit. The proposed approach is accurate and easy to implement. The results are presented for the hard-sphere Boltzmann equation and Maxwell's diffuse-specular boundary conditions, but can be extended to arbitrary intermolecular interactions and more general scattering kernels.