On Three Simple Experiments to Determine Slip Lengths

Authors

Miccal Matthews, Edith Cowan University
James Hill

Document Type

Journal Article

Publisher

Springer Heidelberg

Faculty

Faculty of Computing, Health and Science

School

School of Engineering

RAS ID

7695

Comments

Matthews, M. T., & Hill, J. M. (2009). On three simple experiments to determine slip lengths. Microfluidics and nanofluidics, 6(5), 611-619. Available here

Abstract

It is now well established that for fluid flow at the micro- and nano-scales the standard no-slip boundary condition of fluid mechanics at fluid–solid interfaces is not applicable and must be replaced by a boundary condition that allows some degree of tangential fluid slip. Although molecular dynamics studies support this notion, an experimental verification of a slip boundary condition remains lacking, primarily due to the difficulty of performing accurate experimental observations at small scales. In this article, three simple fluid problems are studied in detail, namely a fluid near a solid wall that is suddenly set in motion (Stokes’ first problem), the long-time behavior of a fluid near an oscillating solid wall (Stokes’ second problem), and the long-time behavior of a fluid between two parallel walls one of which is oscillating (oscillatory Couette flow). The no-slip boundary condition is replaced with the Navier boundary condition, which allows a certain degree of tangential fluid slip via a constant slip length. The aim is to obtain analytical expressions, which may be used in an experimental determination of the constant slip length for any fluid–solid combination.

DOI

10.1007/s10404-008-0338-9