Kinetic Methods for Solving Unsteady Problems with Jet Flows

Abstract

The study of nonstationary rarefied gas flows is currently paid much attention. Such interest to these problems is caused by the creation of pulsed jets used for the deposition of thin films and special coatings on solid surfaces. However the problems of nonstationary rarefied gas flows have not been studied sufficiently fully because of their large computational complexity. In this paper the computational aspects of investigating the nonstationary flows of a reflected gas from a wall and flowing through a suddenly formed gap is considering. The objective of this study is to analyze the possible numerical kinetic approaches for solving such nonstationary problems and to identify the difficulties encountered in solving.When studying the gas flows in strong rarefaction regimes one should consider the Boltzmann kinetic equation, but its numerical implementation is rather laborious. In order  to use more simple approaches based for example on approximation kinetic equations (Ellipsoidal-Statistical model,  Shakhov model), it is important to estimate the difference of the solutions of the model equations and the Boltzmann equation. For this purpose two auxiliary problems are considered: reflection of the gas flow from the wall and outflow of the free jet into the rarefied background gas. Numerical solution of these problems shows a weak dependence of the solution on the type of the collision operator in the rarefied region, but a strong dependence on the velocity grid step . The detailed velocity grid is necessary to avoid non-monotonous behavior of macroparameters caused by the “ray effect”. To reduce numerical costs on detailed grid a hybrid method based on the synthesis of model equation and the Boltzmann equation is proposed. Such approach can be promising since it reduces the domain in which the Boltzmann collision integral should be used.The results presented in this paper were obtained using two different software packages Unified Flow Solver (UFS) [13] and Nesvetay 3D [14-15]. Note that UFS uses the discrete ordinate method for velocity space on a uniform grid and a hierarchical adaptive mesh refinement in physical space.  The possibility of calculating both the Boltzmann equation and model equations is realized. The Nesvetay 3D complex was created to solve the Shakhov model equation, (S-model)  and makes it possible to calculate on non-structured non uniform grids in velocity and  physical spaces.Translated from Russian. Original text: Mathematics and Mathematical Modeling. 2018. no. 4. Pp. 27-44.