Knudsen flow 75 years on: the current state of the art for flow of rarefied gases in tubes and systems

Abstract

Following a brief historical introduction an overview is given relating the most recent studies of rarefied gas flow to the early work of Knudsen. The first paper submitted in October 1908 (published in 1909) initiated a period of intense activity by Knudsen, Smoluchowski (1910) and, a little later, by Gaede (1913) and Langmuir (1912). This also covered the transition to the already well established hydrodynamic flow expressed in terms of the ratio of mean free path to critical apparatus dimension: which is now referred to as the Knudsen number. The desorption, evaporation and scattering of molecules from surfaces was described in terms of the Knudsen cosine law of scattering. The Knudsen effusion method for determining vapour pressure, also introduced in 1909, has become the main tool for studies of the related problem of the dissociation, chemical bonding and the vaporisation process itself. Clausing (1926) developed, as an alternative to conductances, the concept of transmission probability, still referred to as the Clausing factor, and provided a procedure for their more accurate evaluation in long and short tubes. A number of misconceptions of these early efforts have found their way into the literature and current books on vacuum science and technology. However, detailed studies have clarified the problem of gas-surface interactions; the gas flow in tubes has been tackled with Clausing-type integral equations and by statistical computation techniques based on Monte Carlo analysis procedures adaptable to more complex systems. Results have been confirmed experimentally using molecular-impact pressure probe measuring techniques.