Numerical modeling of pressure-driven nitrogen slip flow in long rectangular microchannels

This article addresses some analytical and numerical modeling issues regarding the simulation of pressure-driven nitrogen slip flow in long microchannels. The main motivation for the study is to overcome the intense computational effort required by the large computational domain and the slow downstream variation and convergence in this problem, and to address some of the existing concerns with current models. A parallel solver is developed and used along with a serial version to obtain the steady state solution. This approach is found to provide an efficient and accurate solution to the problem. A comparison with earlier results is used for validation, as well as for justifying this hybrid approach. Some implemental issues related to the parallel algorithm are discussed and solved. The effects of variable properties, rarefaction, and the source terms in energy equation are determined and are found to be significant, particularly for the case of uniform wall heat flux boundary condition.