Atomistic-Continuum Hybrid Simulation of Heat Transfer between Argon Flow and Copper Plates

TL;DR

This paper presents a hybrid atomistic-continuum simulation method to study heat transfer between argon flow and copper plates, revealing higher heat transfer rates than macroscopic predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled simulation approach combining molecular dynamics and continuum fluid dynamics for heat transfer analysis.

Findings

Heat transfer is significantly higher than macroscopic predictions.

The hybrid method is validated against classical flow and conduction problems.

Convection between argon and copper shows enhanced heat transfer.

Abstract

A simulation work aiming to study heat transfer coefficient between argon fluid flow and copper plate is carried out based on atomistic-continuum hybrid method. Navier-Stokes equations for continuum domain are solved through the Pressure Implicit with Splitting of Operators (PISO) algorithm, and the atom evolution in molecular domain is solved through the Verlet algorithm. The solver is validated by solving Couette flow and heat conduction problems. With both momentum and energy coupling method applied, simulations on convection of argon flows between two parallel plates are performed. The top plate is kept as a constant velocity and has higher temperature, while the lower one, which is modeled with FCC copper lattices, is also fixed but has lower temperature. It is found that, heat transfer between argon fluid flow and copper plate in this situation is much higher than that at macroscopic when the flow is fully developed.