Large variation in the boundary-condition slippage for a rarefied gas flowing between two surfaces

Phys Rev Lett. 2011 Oct 14;107(16):164501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.164501. Epub 2011 Oct 11.

Abstract

We study the slippage of a gas along mobile rigid walls in the sphere-plane confined geometry and find that it varies considerably with pressure. The classical no-slip boundary condition valid at ambient pressure changes continuously to an almost perfect slip condition in a primary vacuum. Our study emphasizes the key role played by the mean free path of the gas molecules on the interaction between a confined fluid and solid surfaces and further demonstrates that the macroscopic hydrodynamics approach can be used with confidence even in a primary vacuum environment where it is intuitively expected to fail.