A hybrid continuum/particle approach for micro-scale gas flows

A hybrid continuum/particle approach is proposed for micro scale gas flows in this paper. The approach couples the DSMC-IP method and a Navier-Stokes solver with an adaptive interface. The continuum solver uses the particle cells as ghost cells because the IP method preserves the hydrodynamic information that the continuum solver uses. In order to generate particles from the continuum side, two strategies are proposed. The first one uses a condition similar to the Marshak condition in generating particles through the interface. The second strategy adopts buffer cells and reservoir cells, which avoids directly generating particles. The interface is determined by a continuum breakdown parameter that is evaluated in every time step. In order to track the interface, a mapping technique is used in the code. Numerical examples show that the hybrid approach couples the continuum solver and the particle method very smoothly. Simulated results also show the effects of the cutoff value of the continuum breakdown parameter.