Thermophoretic Force
The Thermophoretic Force accounts for a force on a particle due to gradients in the temperature of the background fluid. The thermophoretic force is defined as:
where
k (SI unit: W/(m K)) is the thermal conductivity of the fluid,
kp (SI unit: W/(m K)) is the particle thermal conductivity,
T (SI unit: K) is the fluid temperature,
dp (SI unit: m) is the particle diameter,
μ (SI unit: Pa s) is the fluid dynamic viscosity,
ρ (SI unit: kg/m3) is the fluid density, and
Cs is a dimensionless constant equal to 1.17.
This expression for the thermophoretic force is valid for continuum flows, in which the particle Knudsen number is very small. The thermophoretic force makes particles move from hotter to cooler regions. This is why dust tends to settle in a corner of the kitchen, furthest away from the oven.
Rarefaction effects in Thermophoresis
If the Include rarefaction effects check box is selected in the physics interface Particle Release and Propagation section, other expressions for the thermophoretic force are available. The Epstein model is equivalent to the expression for continuum flow.
If the Waldmann model is selected, the thermophoretic force is defined as:
where
Mg (SI unit: kg/mol) is the gas molar mass,
kB = 1.380649 × 10-23 J/K is the Boltzmann constant, and
rp (SI unit: m) is the particle radius.
The Waldmann model is appropriate for free molecular flows.
If the Talbot model is selected, the thermophoretic force is defined as:
If the Linearized BGK model is selected, the thermophoretic force is expressed using the analysis of the linearized Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) and S model kinetic equations by Beresnev and Chernyak (Ref. 26). The thermophoretic force is defined in terms of the free-molecular limit,
where FW (SI unit: N) is the thermophoretic force as calculated in the Waldmann model, R is a dimensionless number defined as
where Pr (dimensionless) is the fluid Prandtl number,
and αE (dimensionless) is the energy accommodation coefficient, with αE = 1 and αE = 0 corresponding to diffuse and specular reflection of all gas molecules at the surface, respectively. The dimensionless coefficients are defined as
where the dimensionless terms fij are defined as interpolation functions of R (Ref. 26).
f11
f12
f21
f22
f31
f32
f41
f42
Note that this data is tabulated assuming that the fluid Prandtl number is 2/3.