Application of a Hybrid Method to Microflow Simulation

Abstract

The gas flow in a microchannel driven by an arbitrary pressure difference is investigated numerically in a wide range of Knudsen numbers. The simulation is based on a hybrid method that dynamically couples the solutions of the S-model kinetic equation and the Navier–Stokes equations. A complete solution is obtained by matching the half-fluxes of macroscopic variables on the boundary between the domains, thus ensuring the fulfillment of the mass, momentum, and energy conservation laws through the boundary. The efficiency of the hybrid method is improved via MPI parallelization. The accuracy and robustness of the hybrid method as applied to microflows is estimated by comparing the results with the full solution of the kinetic equation.