On mechanisms of choked gas flows in microchannels

Choked gas flows in microchannels have been reported before based solely on experimental measurements, but the underlining physical mechanism has yet to be clarified. In this work, we are to explore the process via numerical modeling of choked gas flows through a straight microchannel that connects two gas reservoirs. The major theoretical consideration lies in that, since the gas in microchannels may not be necessarily rarefied even at a high Knudsen number, a generalized Monte Carlo method based on the Enskog theory, GEMC, was thus used instead of direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC). Our results indicate that the choked gas flows in microchannels can be divided into two types: sonic choking and subsonic choking, because the sonic point does not always exist even though the gas flows appear choked, depending on the inlet-outlet pressure ratio and the length-height ratio of the channel. Even if the gas flow does not reach a sonic point at the outlet region, the effective pressure ratio (pi/po) acting on the channel becomes asymptotically changeless when the pressure ratio on the buffer regions (pi′/po′) is higher than a certain value. The subsonic choking may caused by the expansion wave or the strong non-equilibrium effect at the outlet.