Gaseous microflow modeling using the Fokker-Planck equation.

Abstract

We present a comparative study of gaseous microflow systems using the recently introduced Fokker-Planck approach and other methods such as: direct simulation Monte Carlo, lattice Boltzmann, and variational solution of Boltzmann-BGK. We show that this Fokker-Plank approach performs efficiently at intermediate values of Knudsen number, a region where direct simulation Monte Carlo becomes expensive and lattice Boltzmann becomes inaccurate. We also investigate the effectiveness of a recently proposed Fokker-Planck model in simulations of heat transfer, as a function of relevant parameters such as the Prandtl, Knudsen numbers. Furthermore, we present simulation of shock wave as a function of Mach number in transonic regime. Our results suggest that the performance of the Fokker-Planck approach is superior to that of the other methods in transition regime for rarefied gas flow and transonic regime for shock wave.