Dissipative Particle Dynamics investigation of parameters affecting planar nanochannel flows

The method of Dissipative Particle Dynamics is applied to investigate the effect of the parameters involved in a nano-channel Poisseuille flow. The parameters considered here include (a) fluid/wall interactions, (b) wall material, (c) range of interaction of fluid particles and wall particles, and (d) external applied force. The computed macroscopic quantities include density, velocity, pressure and temperature profiles. Fluid particle localization near the solid wall is affected by the conservative force (fluid/wall interactions), the wall number density, and the range of atomic interactions (cut-off radius). The external driving force magnitude does not affect the number density distribution. Fluid velocity increases as the conservative force and the wall density increase and the cut-off radius decreases. Pressure distribution is mainly affected by the conservative force and the interaction cut-off radius. Temperature is uniform across most of the channel but presents an increase close to the solid walls especially when increasing the external driving force. We believe that the detailed knowledge of the fluid behaviour under variation of the system parameters obtained from the DPD simulations could be helpful in the design of nanodevices such as lab-on-a-chip devices and nanomixers. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.