Kinetic Effects in Non-ideal, Two-Phase Shear Flows

A steady two-phase Couette flow in a liquid film in contact with its vapor phase, through a resolved interface, is studied numerically by Direct Simulation Monte Carlo, based on Enskog–Vlasov kinetic model. Simulations with increasing degree of vapor non-ideality are performed to assess the attenuation of kinetic effects as the vapor phase becomes denser and denser. Deviations of flow properties from hydrodynamic behavior are obtained by direct comparison with a simple hydrodynamic model and by the numerical computation of higher order moments, not present in the hydrodynamic description.