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Macroscopic and kinetic modelling of rarefied polyatomic gases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Behnam Rahimi*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 2Y2, Canada
Henning Struchtrup
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 2Y2, Canada
*
†Email address for correspondence: behnamr@uvic.ca

Abstract

A kinetic model and corresponding high-order macroscopic model for the accurate description of rarefied polyatomic gas flows are introduced. The different energy exchange processes are accounted for with a two term collision model. The proposed kinetic model, which is an extension of the S-model, predicts correct relaxation of higher moments and delivers the accurate Prandtl ( $Pr$ ) number. Also, the model has a proven linear H-theorem. The order of magnitude method is applied to the primary moment equations to acquire the optimized moment definitions and the final scaled set of Grad’s 36 moment equations for polyatomic gases. At the first order, a modification of the Navier–Stokes–Fourier (NSF) equations is obtained. At third order of accuracy, a set of 19 regularized partial differential equations (R19) is obtained. Furthermore, the terms associated with the internal degrees of freedom yield various intermediate orders of accuracy, a total of 13 different orders. Thereafter, boundary conditions for the proposed macroscopic model are introduced. The unsteady heat conduction of a gas at rest is studied numerically and analytically as an example of a boundary value problem. The results for different gases are given and effects of Knudsen numbers, degrees of freedom, accommodation coefficients and temperature-dependent properties are investigated. For some cases, the higher-order effects are very dominant and the widely used first-order set of the NSF equations fails to accurately capture the gas behaviour and should be replaced by the proposed higher-order set of equations.

Information

Type
Papers
Copyright
© 2016 Cambridge University Press 
Figure 0

Table 1. Maxwell molecule relaxation times.

Figure 1

Table 2. Relaxation times for higher moments based on four new free parameters and comparison with the BGK model.

Figure 2

Figure 1. General stationary heat conduction schematic. Top and bottom walls are at different temperatures, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{WT}$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{WB}$.

Figure 3

Figure 2. Comparison of temperature and density profiles for $Kn$ numbers equal to 0.071 and 0.71 with $t_{int}/t_{tr}=1$. Results shown are obtained from: R19 equations (blue dashed line); RNSF equations (black line); DSMC method (red triangles).

Figure 4

Figure 3. Comparison of total heat flux as a function of reference pressure, ranging from continuum to transition regime. Results shown are obtained from: R19 equations (black line); RNSF equations (blue dashed line); DSMC (red triangles).

Figure 5

Figure 4. Comparison of total heat flux as a function of wall accommodation coefficient, ranging from specular reflection to full accommodation at wall. Results shown are obtained from: R19 equations (black dashed line); Holway model (red triangles).

Figure 6

Figure 5. Comparison of translational and internal heat fluxes as a function of reference Knudsen number, ranging from continuum to transition regime. Results shown are obtained from: R19 equations (black dashed line); Andries model (red triangles).

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Figure 6. Numerical results of stationary heat conduction from set of R19 equations. Red line is at $t=0~\text{s}$; black dashed line is at $t=0.2~\text{s}$; blue thin line is at $t=0.6~\text{s}$; green thick line is at $t=1.5~\text{s}$; grey dot-dashed line is at $t=29~\text{s}$.

Figure 8

Figure 7. Steady state profiles of $\text{N}_{2}$ gas obtained from numerical and analytical methods. Red line: R19-numerical; black dot-dashed line: RNSF-numerical; blue dotted line: R19-analytical.

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Figure 8. Steady state profiles of $\text{N}_{2}$ gas obtained from numerical method with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{WB}=0$ and red line: $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{WT}=0.5$; black dot-dashed line: $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{WT}=2.5$.

Figure 10

Figure 9. Steady state profiles of different gases obtained from numerical solution of the R19 equations. Red line: $\text{H}_{2}$; black dot-dashed line: $\text{N}_{2}$; blue dashed line: $\text{CH}_{4}$.

Figure 11

Figure 10. Steady state profiles of $\text{N}_{2}$ gas obtained from numerical method of the R19 equations with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{WB}=0$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{WT}=0.5$. Red line: $T_{0}=300$; black dot-dashed line: $T_{0}=700$.

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Figure 11. Steady state profiles of $\text{N}_{2}$ gases obtained from numerical solution of the R19 equations with $Kn_{tr}=0.04$ and $Kn_{int}=0.2$. Blue dotted line: $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}=1$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}=1$; red line: $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}=1$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}=0.5$; black dashed line: $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}=0.5$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}=1$.