KINETIC-THEORY STUDY OF STEADY EVAPORATION FROM A SPHERICAL CONDENSED-PHASE CONTAINING INERT SOLID PARTICLES

Steady evaporation from a spherical and heterogeneous condensed body i nto vacuum is considered. Inert solid particles, initially embedded in the condensed phase, are liberated and collisionally accelerated by t he evaporating gas molecules. A simple mathematical model for the flow is proposed and executed by the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. For small Knudsen numbers, the results are compared with a con tinuum solution including Knudsen layer corrections obtained by a mome nt method, demonstrating that these corrections are leading order effe cts in the treatment. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.