In this work, we have theoretically analyzed and numerically evaluated the accuracy of high-order lattice Boltzmann (LB) models for capturing non-equilibrium effects in rarefied gas flows. In the incompressible limit, the LB equation is proved to be equivalent to the linearized Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) equation. Therefore, when the same Gauss-Hermite quadrature is used, LB method closely assembles the discrete velocity method (DVM). In addition, the order of Hermite expansion for the equilibrium distribution function is found not to be correlated with the approximation order in terms of the Knudsen number to the BGK equation, which was previously suggested by \cite{2006JFM...550..413S}. Furthermore, we have numerically evaluated the LB models for a standing-shear-wave problem, which is designed specifically for assessing model accuracy by excluding the influence of gas molecule/surface interactions at wall boundaries. The numerical simulation results confirm that the high-order terms in the discrete equilibrium distribution function play a negligible role. Meanwhile, appropriate Gauss-Hermite quadrature has the most significant effect on whether LB models can describe the essential flow physics of rarefied gas accurately. For the same order of the Gauss-Hermite quadrature, the exact abscissae will also modestly influence numerical accuracy. Using the same Gauss-Hermite quadrature, the numerical results of both LB and DVM methods are in excellent agreement for flows across a broad range of the Knudsen numbers, which confirms that the LB simulation is similar to the DVM process. Therefore, LB method can offer flexible models suitable for simulating continuum flows at Navier Stokes level and rarefied gas flows at the linearized Boltzmann equation level.
The system of hydrodynamic-type equations is derived from Alexeev's generalized Boltzmann kinetic equation by two-side distribution function for a stratified gas in gravity field. It is applied to a problem of ultrasound propagation and attenuation. The linearized version of the obtained system is studied and compared with the Navier-Stokes one at arbitrary Knudsen numbers. The problem of a generation by a moving plane in a rarefied gas is explored and used as a test while compared with experiment. It is good agreement between predicted propagation speed, attenuation factor and experimental re…
Rooted from the gas kinetics, the lattice Boltzmann method is a powerful tool in modeling hydrodynamics. In the past decade, it has been extended to simulate the rarefied gas flow beyond the Navier-Stokes level, either by using the high-order Gauss-Hermite quadrature, or by introducing the relaxation time that is a function of the gas-wall distance. While the former method, with a limited number of discrete velocities (i.e. D2Q36), is accurate up to the early transition flow regime, the latter method, with the same discrete velocities as that used in simulating hydrodynamics (i.e. D2Q9), is ac…
We propose an extension to recently developed Relativistic Lattice Boltzmann solvers (RLBM), which allows the simulation of flows close to the free streaming limit. Following previous works [Phys. Rev. C 98 (2018) 035201], we use product quadrature rules and select weights and nodes by separately discretising the radial and the angular components. This procedure facilitates the development of quadrature-based RLBM with increased isotropy levels, thus improving the accuracy of the method for the simulation of flows beyond the hydrodynamic regime. In order to quantify the improvement of this dis…
We present a systematic procedure for the construction of relativistic lattice Boltzmann models (R-SLB) appropriate for the simulation of flows of massless particles. Quadrature rules are used for the discretization of the momentum space in spherical coordinates. The models are optimized for one-dimensional flows. The applications considered in this paper are the Sod shock tube and the one-dimensional boost invariant expansion (Bjorken flow). Our models are tested against exact solutions in the inviscid and ballistic limits. At intermediate relaxation times (finite viscosity), we compare with …
A kinetic model is proposed for rarefied flows of molecular gas with rotational and temperature-dependent vibrational degrees of freedom. The model reduces to the Boltzmann equation for monatomic gas when the energy exchange between the translational and internal modes is absent, thus the influence of intermolecular potential can be captured. Moreover, not only the transport coefficients but also their fundamental relaxation processes are recovered. The accuracy of our kinetic model is validated by the direct simulation Monte Carlo method in several rarefied gas flows, including the shock wave…
In this paper, the nonlinear squeeze-film damping (SFD) involving rarefied gas effect in the micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) is investigated. Considering the motion of structures (beam, cantilever, and membrane) in MEMS, the dynamic response of structure will be influenced largely by the squeeze-film damping. In the traditional model, a viscous damping assumption that damping force is linear with moving velocity is used. As the nonlinear damping phenomenon is observed for a micro-structure oscillating with a high-velocity, this assumption is invalid and will generates error result for …
One of classical boundary problems of the kinetic theory (a problem about thermal sliding) of the rarefied gas along a flat firm surface is considered. Kinetic Boltzmann equation with model integral of collisions BGK (Bhatnagar, Gross, Krook) is used. As boundary conditions the boundary Maxwell conditions (mirror-diffuse) are used. The generalized method of a source is applied to the problem decision. Comparison with earlier received results is spent.
In this paper, we employ the lattice Boltzmann method to solve the Boltzmann equation with the Shakhov model for the collision integral in the context of the 3D planar Couette flow. The half-range Gauss-Hermite quadrature is used to account for the wall-induced discontinuity in the distribution function. The lattice Boltzmann simulation results are compared with direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) results for ${}^3{\rm He}$ and ${}^4{\rm He}$ atoms interacting via ab initio potentials, at various values of the rarefaction parameter $δ$, where the temperature of the plates varies from $1\ {\rm…
The influence of the gas-surface interaction law on the classical problems of viscous drag and thermophoresis on a spherical particle with high thermal conductivity immersed in a monatomic rarefied gas is investigated on the basis of the solution of a kinetic model to the linearized Boltzmann equation. The scattering kernel proposed by Cercignani and Lampis is employed to model the gas-surface interaction law via the setting of two accommodation coefficients, namely the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient (TMAC) and the normal energy accommodation coefficient (NEAC). The viscous drag…
For multiscale gas flows, kinetic-continuum hybrid method is usually used to balance the computational accuracy and efficiency. However, the kinetic-continuum coupling is not straightforward since the coupled methods are based on different theoretical frameworks. In particular, it is not easy to recover the non-equilibrium information required by the kinetic method which is lost by the continuum model at the coupling interface. Therefore, we present a multiscale lattice Boltzmann (LB) method which deploys high-order LB models in highly rarefied flow regions and low-order ones in less rarefied …
The interaction of rarefied gases with functionalized surfaces is of great importance in technical applications such as gas separation membranes and catalysis. To investigate the influence of functionalization and rarefaction on gas flow rate in a defined geometry, pressure-driven gas flow experiments with helium and carbon dioxide through plain and alkyl-functionalized microchannels are performed. The experiments cover Knudsen numbers from 0.01 to 200 and therefore the slip flow regime up to free molecular flow. To minimize the experimental uncertainty which is prevalent in micro flow experim…
We present the formulation of a kinetic mapping scheme between the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) and the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) which is at the basis of the hybrid model used to couple the two methods in view of efficiently and accurately simulate isothermal flows characterized by variable rarefaction effects. Owing to the kinetic nature of the LBM, the procedure we propose ensures to accurately couple DSMC and LBM at a larger Kn number than usually done in traditional hybrid DSMC-Navier-Stokes equation models. We show the main steps of the mapping algorithm and illustrate detai…
We study the non-continuous correction in the dynamics of drop impact on a solid substrate. Close to impact, a thin film of gas is formed beneath the drop so that the local Knudsen number is of order one. We consider the first correction to the dynamics which consists of allowing slip of the gas along the substrate and the interface. We focus on the singular dynamics of entrapment that can be seen when surface tension and liquid viscosity can be neglected. There we show that different dynamical regimes are present that tend to lower the singularity strength. We finally suggest how these effect…
An efficient third-order discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) with efficiency is presented in this work for simulating continuum and rarefied flows. By employing two-stage time-stepping scheme and the high-order DUGKS flux reconstruction strategy, third-order of accuracy in both time and space can be achieved in the present method. It is also analytically proven that the second-order DUGKS is a special case of the present method. Compared with the high-order lattice Boltzmann equation {LBE} based methods, the present method is capable to deal with the rarefied flows by adopting the Newt…
A kinetic model called the $ν$-model is proposed to replace the complicated Boltzmann collision operator in the simulation of rarefied flows of monatomic gas. The model follows the relaxation-time approximation, but the collision frequency (i.e, inverse relaxation time) is a function of the molecular velocity to reflect part of the collision details of the Boltzmann equation, and the target velocity distribution function (VDF) to which the VDF relaxes is close to that used in the Shakhov model. Based on the numerical simulation of strong non-equilibrium shock waves, a half-theoretical and half…
The radiometric force on a sphere due to its thermal polarization in a rarefied gas flow being in equilibrium is investigated on the basis of a kinetic model to the linearized Boltzmann equation. The scattering kernel proposed by Cercignani and Lampis to model the gas-surface interaction using two accommodation coefficients, namely the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient and the normal energy accommodation coefficient, is employed as the boundary condition. The radiometric force on the sphere, as well as the flow field of the gas around it, are calculated in a wide range of the gas r…
In the study of rarefied gas dynamics, the discrete velocity method (DVM) has been widely employed to solve the gas kinetic equations. Although various versions of DVM have been developed, their performance, in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency, is yet to be compreheively studied in the whole flow regime. Here, the traditional third-order time-implicit Godunov DVM (GDVM) and the recently developed discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme (DUGKS) are analysed in finding steady-state solutions of the force-driven Poiseuille and lid-driven cavity flows. With the molecular collision and fr…
We study a two phase flow with interactions of liquid and rarefied gas inside the gas phase. The gas phase is modeled by the BGK model of the Boltzmann equation. The liquid phase is modeled by the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. In this paper we have excluded the heat transfer between two phases. The interface boundary conditions for the liquid and gas phases is presented. The BGK model is solved by a semi-Lagrangian scheme with a meshfree reconstruction since the droplet moves inside the gas phase and its interface deforms with respect to time and space. Therefore, the similar meshfre…
The transverse force exerted on a rotating sphere immersed in an otherwise uniform flow of a rarefied gas is investigated based on the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) model of the Boltzmann equation assuming the Maxwell boundary condition on the sphere. In several existing studies, it has been shown that the transverse force acting on the sphere, also known as the Magnus force, has opposite signs in the free molecular and continuum flows. The present study intends to clarify the force's transition in terms of the Knudsen number (i.e., the reciprocal ratio of the sphere radius to the molecular mean…
A system of fluid-dynamic-type equations and their boundary conditions derived from a system of the Boltzmann equation is of great importance in kinetic theory when we are concerned with the motion of a slightly rarefied gas. It offers an efficient alternative to solving the Boltzmann equation directly and, more importantly, provides a clear picture of the flow structure in the near-continuum regime. However, the applicability of the existing slip-flow theory is limited to the case where both the boundary shape and the kinetic boundary condition are smooth functions of the boundary coordinates…
The apparent gas permeability of the porous medium is an important parameter in the prediction of unconventional gas production, which was first investigated systematically by Klinkenberg in 1941 and found to increase with the reciprocal mean gas pressure (or equivalently, the Knudsen number). Although the underlying rarefaction effects are well-known, the reason that the correction factor in Klinkenberg's famous equation decreases when the Knudsen number increases has not been fully understood. Most of the studies idealize the porous medium as a bundle of straight cylindrical tubes, however, …
The Hilbert-Chapman-Enskog expansion of the kinetic equations in mean flight times is believed to be asymptotic rather than convergent. It is therefore inadvisable to use lower order results to simplify the current approximation as is done in the traditional Chapman-Enskog procedure, since that is an iterative method. By avoiding such recycling of lower order results, one obtains macroscopic equations that are asymptotically equivalent to the ones found in the Chapman-Enskog approach. The new equations contain higher order terms that are discarded in the Chapman-Enskog method. These make a sig…
Efficient modeling of rarefied flow has drawn widespread interest for practical engineering applications. In the present work, we proposed the Grad's distribution function for 13 moments-based moment gas kinetic solver (G13-MGKS) and the macroscopic governing equations are derived based on the moment integral of discrete Boltzmann equation in the finite volume framework. Numerical fluxes at the cell interface related to the macroscopic variables, stress and heat flux can be reconstructed from the Boltzmann integration equation at surrounding points of the cell interface directly, so the compli…
A high-performance gas kinetic solver using multi-level parallelization is developed to enable pore-scale simulations of rarefied flows in porous media. The Boltzmann model equation is solved by the discrete velocity method with an iterative scheme. The multi-level MPI/OpenMP parallelization is implemented with the aim to efficiently utilise the computational resources to allow direct simulation of rarefied gas flows in porous media based on digital rock images for the first time. The multi-level parallel approach is analyzed in details confirming its better performance than the commonly-used …
One of the central problems in the study of rarefied gas dynamics is to find the steady-state solution of the Boltzmann equation quickly. When the Knudsen number is large, i.e. the system is highly rarefied, the conventional iteration scheme can lead to convergence within a few iterations. However, when the Knudsen number is small, i.e. the flow falls in the near-continuum regime, hundreds of thousands iterations are needed, and yet the "converged" solutions are prone to be contaminated by accumulated error and large numerical dissipation. Recently, based on the gas kinetic models, the implici…
A rigorous asymptotic analysis of the Boltzmann equation for small Knudsen numbers leads, in the general case, to more complicated sets of differential equations than widely used to describe the behavior of gas in terms of classical fluid dynamics. The present paper deals with such one that is valid for significant temperature variations and finite Reynolds numbers at the same time (slow nonisothermal flow equations). A finite-volume solver developed on the open-source CFD platform OpenFOAM is proposed for computer simulation of a slightly rarefied gas in an arbitrary geometry. Typical tempera…
The importance of accurately capturing two-way coupled interactions between particles with complex shapes and rarefied gas flows is rapidly rising in different practical applications such as aerospace industry and semiconductor manufacturing. The transport of particles in these conditions is often modelled via an Euler-Lagrangian Point-Particles approach, where rarefaction effects are included through the phenomenological Cunningham corrections on the drag force experienced by the particles. In Point-Particles approaches, any explicit relation to the finite size of the particles, shape, orient…
Direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method with simplified Bernoulli-trials (SBT) collision scheme has been used to study the rarefied pressure-driven nitrogen flow through diverging microchannels. The fluid behaviours flowing between two plates with different divergence angles ranging between 0$^{\circ}$ to 17$^{\circ}$ are described at different pressure ratios (1.5${\le}{\prod}{\le}$2.5) and Knudsen numbers (0.03${\le}$Kn${\le}$12.7). The primary flow field properties, including pressure, velocity, and temperature, are presented for divergent microchannels and are compared with those of a …
Numerical solution of non-steady problems of supersonic inflow of a binary mixture of a rarefied gas on a normally posed wall with mirror and diffuse reflection laws is obtained on the basis of the kinetic Boltzmann equation for the model of hard sphere molecules. For calculation of collision integrals we apply the projection method, developed by Tcheremissine for a one-component gas and generalized by the author for a binary gas mixture in the case of cylindrical symmetry. We demonstrate a good qualitative agreement of our results with other authors for one-component gases.
We introduce a numerical solver for the spatially inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation using the Burnett spectral method. The modelling and discretization of the collision operator are based on the previous work [Z. Cai, Y. Fan, and Y. Wang, Burnett spectral method for the spatially homogeneous Boltzmann equation, arXiv:1810.07804], which is the hybridization of the BGK operator for higher moments and the quadratic collision operator for lower moments. To ensure the preservation of the equilibrium state, we introduce an additional term to the discrete collision operator, which equals zero when the…
We study the slippage of a gas along mobile rigid walls in the sphere-plane confined geometry and find that it varies considerably with pressure. The classical no-slip boundary condition valid at ambient pressure changes continuously to an almost perfect slip condition in a primary vacuum. Our study emphasizes the key role played by the mean free-path of the gas molecules on the interaction between a confined fluid and solid surfaces and further demonstrates that the macroscopic hydrodynamics approach can be used with confidence even in a primary vacuum environment where it is intuitively expe…
In this paper, the original discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) is extended to arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) framework for simulating the low-speed continuum and rarefied flows with moving boundaries. For ALE method, the mesh moving velocity is introduced into the Boltzmann-BGK equation. The remapping-free scheme is adopted to develop the present ALE-type DUGKS, which avoids the complex rezoning and remapping process in traditional ALE method. As in some application areas, the large discretization errors will be introduced into the simulation if the geometric conservation is not …
