Weakly rarefied gas flows between nonuniformly heated parallel plates

Abstract

The aim of this research is to establish the validity of the predictions of the theory of slow nonisothermal flows, to study the limits of applicability (with respect to the Knudsen number) of the conclusions reached and to determine the effect of the Knudsen layers on these flows on the basis of a numerical investigation of slow nonisothermal weakly rarefied gas flow in a plane infinite channel with weakly nonequilibrium heating of the walls and a finite wall temperature difference. The gas flow is described by a relaxation transport equation. The results obtained show how quickly, as the Knudsen number decreases, the solutions of the transport equation outside the Knudsen layers tend to the solution of the equations of gas dynamics of slow nonisothermal flows (and not to the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations).