The present work is related to the study of the nitrogen gas flow through diverging micro/nano-channels. The direct simulation Monte-Carlo (DSMC) method has been used to study the flow. The Simplified Bernoulli Trials (SBT) collision scheme has been employed to reduce the computational costs and required amounts of the computer resources. The effects of various divergence angles on flow and thermal fields have been studied for different Knudsen numbers in late-slip and early-transition regimes. The inlet-to-outlet pressure ratio has been set to 2.5 for micro/nano-channels with a uniform constant wall temperature. By analyzing the numerical results no flow separation has been found due to slip at the wall which is different than flow behavior in continuum regime. The results indicate that the viscous component has a relatively large contribution in the overall pressure drop and flow behavior. It observed that for low divergence angles the effects of pressure forces dominate the effects of shear stress and divergence angle and cause the flow accelerate along the channel while by increasing the divergence angle and therefore effects of flow expansion, the flow decelerates along the channel. The mass flow rate through channel increases by increasing the divergence angle. Cold-to-hot heat transfer has been observed in diverging micro/nano-channels. In order to investigate the thermal behavior in diverging micro/nano-channels, the results have been compared to weakly non-linear constitutive laws derived from Boltzmann’s equation.

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