Analysis for Rarefied Gas Flow in a Rotating Cylinder

Behaviors inside rotating cylinders where the range of operating pressure is very wide, i.e. from subatmospheric to almost vacuum are subject of this study. The flow near the rotating axis is very rarefied. If a flow becomes rarefied, the flow cannot be treated as that of a continuum media. Therefore the flow cannot be analyzed by the method based on solving Navier-Stokes equation. One of the promising methods is considered to be DSMC (Direct Simulation Monte Carlo) method based on Boltzmann equation ([1]). In this paper, fundamental validation analyses related to isotope separation in a rotating cylinder calculations of endplate type centrifuge were performed for the parametric study, with DSMC. The results were compared with the experimental results by Groth et al ([2]). The validity of the calculations and its limit were also discussed.