Fluid flows in the nanometer scale can be studied by molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo methods, but the time and length scales are usually limited to rather short ranges due to the computational expense. Kinetic theory is an alternative tool for studying nanoscale flows, but the existing models are rather complicated and difficult to implement. In this paper, we propose a simple Enskog-like kinetic model for nanoscale flows. The results predicted by this model compare well with molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo simulation results in the literature.

• Received 27 May 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.71.035301