Gas flow through a micro-orifice due to small pressure difference

Abstract

Rarefied gas flow through a micro-orifice connecting two reservoirs at small pressure differences is considered in the whole range of rarefaction by the linearized BGK kinetic model equation. The problem is computationally challenging due to the five dimensional nature of the distribution function and techniques such as parallelization and numerical schemes of low memory requirements have been applied. Results include the distributions of density, velocity, temperature, as well as flow rates. The independence of flow rate in terms of the wall surface accommodation properties is confirmed.