A FRICTION FACTOR CORRELATION FOR GAS FLOW IN PARALLEL PLATE MICROCHANNELS BY CONSIDERING COMBINED EFFECTS OF COMPRESSIBILITY AND RAREFACTION

摘要

The effects of compressibility and rarefaction for gas flow in microchannels have been extensively studied separately. However, these two effects are always combined for gas flow in microchannels. In this paper, the two-dimensional compressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved for gas flow in parallel plate channels with a slip boundary condition to study the combined effects of compressibility and rarefaction on the friction factor. The numerical methodology is based on the control volume finite difference scheme. It is found that the effect of compressibility increases the velocity gradient near the wall which then increases the friction factor. On the other hand, increasing the velocity gradient near the wall leads to a much larger slip velocity and implies a stronger rarefaction effect and a corresponding decrease in the friction factor. These two opposite effects make the effect of compressibility on friction factor for slip flow weaker than that for no-slip compressible flow. A correlation among fRe, Kn and Ma is presented. The correlation is validated with available experimental and analytical results.