The viscosity of gases plays an important role in the kinetic theory of gases and in the continuum-fluid modeling of the rarefied gas flows. In this paper we investigate the effect of the gas viscosity on the surface properties as surface gas temperature and slip velocity in rarefied gas simulations. Three various viscosity models in the literature such as the Maxwell, Power Law and Sutherland models are evaluated. They are implemented into OpenFOAM to work with the solver “rhoCentralFoam” that solves the Navier-Stokes-Fourier equations. Four test cases such as the pressure driven backward facing step nanochannel, lid-driven micro-cavity, hypersonic gas flows past the sharp 25-55-deg. biconic and the circular cylinder in cross-flow cases are considered for evaluating three viscosity models. The simulation results show that, whichever the first-order or second-order slip and jump conditions are adopted, the simulation results of the surface temperature and slip velocity using the Maxwell viscosity model give good agreement with DSMC data for all cases studied.
Effect of viscosity on slip boundary conditions in rarefied gas flows
