DSMC Simulation of Microstructure Actuation by Knudsen Thermal Forces including Binary Mixtures.

Complex and non-intuitive flow structures controlled only by thermal gradients can be observed in rarefied gas flows. A force of thermophoretic nature, often referred to as Knudsen or radiometric force, can become dominant in microflow applications. A Microelectromechanical In-plane Knudsen Radiometric Actuator (MIKRA) that exploits these forces has been developed and tested at Purdue. Previous efforts used DSMC to understand the MIKRA flow structure and validate numerical modeling for simple gases. This work investigated more realistic boundary conditions as well as species separation around the MIKRA beams for Xe-He and N2-H2O mixtures. The main goal of this work was to run DSMC simulations of the MIKRA sensor to not only understand how it can be accurately modeled, but to look at future applications for gas mixture sensing as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]