Study of scoop drive and polymeric surface effects on the separation factors for a gas centrifuge using MD-DSMC method

S Yousefi-Nasab and J Safdari and J Karimi-Sabet and A Norouzi, JOURNAL OF THE BRAZILIAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING, 43, 344 (2021).

DOI: 10.1007/s40430-021-03067-5

Gas centrifuges are widely used to isotope separation of about 154 stable isotopes. It is very important to simulate the behavior of dilute gas inside a centrifuge machine using accurate methods to increase the optimal performance of a machine. Due to the high accuracy of the molecular dynamics (MD) method in the interaction of gas molecules with the surfaces, in this paper, this method has been used for the interaction of uranium hexafluoride gas molecules with the rotor surfaces of the machine and its results have been used to simulation of the gas inside the rotor by the DSMC method. Consequently, a gas centrifuge was simulated using a new hybrid MD-DSMC method. The boundary condition used in the MD-DSMC method is the Cercignani-Lampis-Lord. In this method, the gas behavior near the scoop of the centrifuge machine was investigated using the new algorithm of the velocity reduction coefficient. The results show that for the interaction of uranium hexafluoride molecules with the composite surfaces of rotor, the accommodation coefficients take non-unit values. Also, simulation of the rarefied gas inside the rotor by the MD-DSMC method shows that for a velocity reduction coefficient equal to 0.84, the separation work value for the machine will be maximized. Finally, by comparing the separation factors obtained from MD-DSMC and DSMC methods with experimental results, it can be concluded that applying the effects of the polymeric surface of the rotor and gas conditions using the MD-DSMC method increases the accuracy of the results until 6 percent.

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