Abstract:
In micro devices or under a vacuum circumstance of a macroscale, the flows of rarefied gas are induced by the non-uniform temperature fields, with a force named the radiometric force on the immersed structures. In this paper, the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is applied in combination with the Cercignani-Lampis (CL) gas-surface interaction model, to investigate the effects of the normal energy accommodation coefficient (NEAC) and the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient (TMAC) on the characteristics of the rarefied gas flows around a pair of cold-hot microbeams. It is shown that the flow patterns, the thermal transfer performance, the pressure distributions, and the radiometric force characteristics are very sensitive to the variations of the accommodation coefficients. By only varying the accommodation coefficient of the cold microbeam, the radiometric force increases approximately linearly with the decrease of the NEAC, and decreases nonlinearly with the decrease of the TMAC. By concurrently varying the accommodation coefficients of both microbeams, the radiometric force increases nonlinearly with the decrease of the TMAC, while it reduces first and then increases as the NEAC decreases. The results can be used in the design and manufacturing of MEMS devices to obtain as large radiometric force as possible.